# Less Is More: Why Audio on SoundCloud Looks Different

DevFeed: [Less Is More: Why Audio on SoundCloud Looks Different](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/less-is-more-why-audio-on-soundcloud-looks-different-2073.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://developers.soundcloud.com/blog//less-is-more-why-soundcloud-low-passes-its-aac-transcodings>)

Published: 2026-06-18T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [SoundCloud Backstage Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/soundcloud-backstage-blog.md>)

Topics: [Compression](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/compression.md>), [Optimization](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/optimization.md>)

Tags: [audio](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/audio.md>), [compression](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/compression.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [optimization](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/optimization.md>), [streaming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/streaming.md>), [transcodings](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transcodings.md>)

## AI overview

SoundCloud explains why its upgraded AAC encoder applies a low-pass filter around 17 kHz. By discarding frequencies that most listeners barely perceive, the encoder can allocate more bits to audible content and improve overall perceptual quality, even though spectrograms appear to show a loss.

## Source excerpt

Last year, SoundCloud upgraded its AAC encoder for the first time in over a decade. The new one (Fraunhofer's libfdk_aac) delivers higher...