High CPU usage when audio transcoding?

[TheDreadPirate]

After speaking with the devs, the theory is that changes in ffmpeg7 made ffmpeg itself significantly more multi-threaded than it was with ffmpeg6.

I did some audio-only transcode testing (also TrueHD to AAC) and the difference in CPU usage between ffmpeg6 and 7 was not small. Not significant for my system, but could be significant for other systems. My testing with ffmpeg6 had CPU usage about about 105-110% (one thread fully utilized, one thread lightly utilized). With ffmpeg7 it was around 160-170% (one thread fully utilized, three threads 15-30% utilized). But was also transcoding about 40-50% faster.

And since your CPU is also 4 cores/8 threads and of similar performance to my 12100, I don't see why your system is struggling.