Overview: AAC family
AAC-family formats combine different coding tools and profiles for audio delivery under varying rate and compatibility constraints.
AAC-LC, HE-AAC, HE-AAC v2 and xHE-AAC identify particular arrangements within the family. A player reporting broad AAC support may still need to handle the specific stream's tools. These pages make the distinctions visible without deriving the whole format from an AAC label alone.
AAC-LC
AAC-LC is the Low Complexity form of Advanced Audio Coding used for lossy mono, stereo, and multichannel audio.HE-AAC
HE-AAC combines an AAC-LC core with Spectral Band Replication to encode audio efficiently at lower bitrates.HE-AAC v2
HE-AAC v2 adds parametric stereo coding to HE-AAC for efficient delivery of stereo audio at very low bitrates.xHE-AAC
xHE-AAC combines Extended HE-AAC based on USAC with MPEG-D loudness and dynamic-range control for speech and music delivery.