[butatista]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigFil Just curious, why the hell would you want to go from MP3 to WMA? Seems a little backwards if you ask me.

Maybe, but I am new to all this. I have ripped my CD collection to WMA as I really can't hear the difference in quality as opposed to MP3. And I knew I could fit more songs into my player using WMA.

I have downloaded a few tracks which are MP3 so consequently I was wondering whether its best to convert these to WMA.

Thanks to everyone who replied. I will probably leave them in the format I downloaded them in, MP3.

 

[Guust-Fi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by butatista I will probably leave them in the format I downloaded them in, MP3.

If you want to rip your songs in wma to gain more space on your mp3 player that's ok. If you don't have alot of storage, wma seems to be the smallest with acceptable sound quality. However your experience will grow and you will start to recognize the flaws sooner or later. It just takes some higher end equipment to hear it. What do you use to listen to your songs? The best compatibility/size/quality format is mp3 APS or APX imo.

 

[Krishna]

Quote:

Originally Posted by necropimp you are very wrong... what is lost in compression is gone forever

Ok thanks for the info. I had a feeling this was the case.

 

[butatista]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guust-Fi If you want to rip your songs in wma to gain more space on your mp3 player that's ok. If you don't have alot of storage, wma seems to be the smallest with acceptable sound quality. However your experience will grow and you will start to recognize the flaws sooner or later. It just takes some higher end equipment to hear it. What do you use to listen to your songs? The best compatibility/size/quality format is mp3 APS or APX imo.

My Zen Micro

 

[Guust-Fi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by butatista My Zen Micro

With stock earbuds? The Zen Micro is supposed to sound pretty good, some say better than the Ipod mini but I have heard neither of them yet. You should at least consider buying some canalphones. That will make a huge difference. If you are looking for a cheap audio solution look for the chaintech av710 (25$) or even better an EMU 0404. Once you've got a better source and headphones you will be able to recognize the differences and you will be able to decide what music format suits you best.

 

[GSTom1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helter Skelter Voting "Don't do it but use dbPowerAmp if you really must".

I adding another vote for “Don't do it but use dbPowerAmp if you really must.”

I wanted to squeeze more music onto my 5GB Muvo2 FM but I was too lazy to re-rip a lot of my CDs so I transcoded from 192kbps VBR mp3s to 96kbps CBR wmas using dbPowerAmp. The music sounds pretty good, but probably not as good as if I re-ripped my CDs from scratch.

Since I am using a lower bit rate for my wmas, I can fit twice as much music onto my player now. The downside of wmas is that they use more battery for playback than mp3s do.

 

[Luke]

I am against converting to wma's, regardless of whether you're doing it from mp3 or wavs or straight from CD. They're a pain in the rear, because once you start collecting wma's, you'll start buying wma's online, and with that comes all the licensing headaches. You won't have the freedom of tagging your own files the way you want, you'll have restricted use of them (e.g. playing on networks, other DAPs, etc.), and they'll be mixed up with your other unlicensed wma's. And ten years from now, will you still have your wma music? Will it survive X number of different computer purchases and new DAPs? Certainly not. But your MP3s and CDs will still be in fine shape.

It's just a confusing mess, and my solution is avoid wma's. Period.

 

[alanz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dura Rip a CD to say 256 kbs (which is high!) and you throw away about 75% of the sound-information on the CD.

I don't understand this comment at all. Compression will account for a much smaller file size than the original, but I'd be hard pressed to accept that a 256 kbs compressed file has only 25% of the sound-information of the original.
This would imply pretty awful quality.

I'd rather say it has nearly all of the sound informatin of the original, but in much more efficient file format.

For example, when using a lossless compression like the Zip format, all of a file's information is retained. The amount of compression and the final compressed size will vary widely with the source material. A word document might compress 95+ percent, where a jpg (which is already a very compressed format) might not compress much at all.

Music is very compressable... even in lossless. But when you go to a lossy format, you trade off some of the sound information to reduce file size. Typically, the goal is to throw away inaudible information, but that's not always realized, and then the sound quality does go down.

So, encoding at a high bitrate generally results in lossy files that can be pretty close to that of the original in sound quality (at least when played back on all the the most demanding equipment).