Highest possible AAC audio bitrate in MP4 videos?

[visuatrox]

What is the highest AAC audio bitrate Apple TV can handle. 160kbps is enough for stereo, but when using 6 channel discrete AAC it is not much. The official specs claim 160kbps, but technically the hardware should be capable of atleast 320kbps. Anyone know?, I unfortunately can't test this myself.

(I want to use 6 channel AAC instead of AC3 because of compatibility reasons when used with other media players.)

 

[dynaflash]

Yeah it can handle it, but realize the atv will mix it down to a funky 3.1 dpl2 mixdown. Actually you'd probably be better off with 5.1 dpl2 afaik.

 

[Killyp]

Not sure if 160 kbps is for the AC3 encoded file overall, or for each channel individually. DVDs are generally around 160 kbps in each channel once the AC3 has been decoded.

 

[visuatrox]

My main media player is not an AppleTV so the mixdown is not a problem. Anyway I would rather have the files future proof and follow MP4 standards than having to recode them at some point.

Anyway when encoding AAC, all applications I have tried encoding with split the bitrate between 6 channels.. the resulting audio quality was abysmal, so it is good to hear that the ATV should be able to handle more.