[GnuB]

A D2 is on the way. I am going to rip my most favorite albums and was wondering which format WMA or MP3 would be best and what bitrate to use with either. The COWON website shows that the D2 can support 320kbps MP3 and 256kbps WMA. I would even like to record my most-most favorites as a lossless format but WAV seems to be the only possibility according to the specs. WMA lossless would be a good choice if it were supported by the D2.

Anyhoo, any thoughts or comments?

 

[Caribou679]

Hi!
For consideration of size vs sound quality I rip my music in Flac and leave it on my HDD. I encode from Flac, or from the cd directly to format Ogg level 8.
level 8 is about 256kb and a normal cd of music gives about, more or less, 100 mb and the same cd of music in Flac gives about 300-350 mb.

The D2 has no problems with these formats. Before I was encoding Ogg level 2 with a size of 30 mb by cd, and the sound quality was great. Then I upgraded to Ogg level 6 about 190 kbs and to my ears it sounded fuller. More body. Then someone suggested Ogg level 8 and it is fine and my standard.

I do not discern differences between Flac and Ogg on the D2 so for convenience of size I run with Ogg.

i tried mp3, at lower rates, 128 and 192, and it was not the same as Ogg, TO MY EARS, IMHO!

My wife used a small Creative player and I encoded the music in wma 96k and she loved it!

It all depends of your priorities and ears

regards,

 

[majkel]

Don't use ogg for the D2. You will hear constant hiss and other artifacts on sensitive headphones when you play ogg in any (good quality) bitrate.

Cowon D2 is capable of playing back any lossy WMA, including 320 CBR and Q98 VBR. The latter is the best SQ wise, but bitrates may be around 350kb/s.
If you want to save some space - use WMA VBR Quality 90, AKA 135-215 in the WMP11. It outperforms wma CBR 256kb/s a bit while being around 190kb/s.

 

[GnuB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caribou679 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hi! For consideration of size vs sound quality I rip my music in Flac and leave it on my HDD. I encode from Flac, or from the cd directly to format Ogg level 8. level 8 is about 256kb and a normal cd of music gives about, more or less, 100 mb and the same cd of music in Flac gives about 300-350 mb. ..(snip)..

I would like to stay with either WMA or MP3 for the convenience of using the files on other devices. MP3 would probably be my first choice because that is what my DVD player supports. I don't have the means at the moment to rip or convert to the Flac or Ogg formats so I will probaby wait until another day to try that. It might be something to experiment with when I have the time to devote to doing it right.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caribou679 /img/forum/go_quote.gif ..(snip).. It all depends of your priorities and ears regards,

I guess my priorities would be quality over quantity and size (within reason, or I would rip to wav). I will be listening with a portable amp and ER4P's so I am expecting that lower bitrates would negate the value of having good phones and an amp. Ears: who knows .. Back in the day I listened to LS3/5a speakers through Conrad Johnson tube equipment and was fairly discerning about nuances in the music, soundstage, etc. I am not expecting perfection, only a pleasant listening experience.

Thanks for the Thoughts ..

 

[GnuB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by majkel /img/forum/go_quote.gif Cowon D2 is capable of playing back any lossy WMA, including 320 CBR and Q98 VBR. The latter is the best SQ wise, but bitrates may be around 350kb/s.

I was wondering about VBR on the D2. The spec only shows the D2 good to 256kbps I think. VBR can go as high as 355kbps. It is good to have someone with experience clarify that for me.

Thanks.

 

[majkel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GnuB /img/forum/go_quote.gif I was wondering about VBR on the D2. The spec only shows the D2 good to 256kbps I think. VBR can go as high as 355kbps. It is good to have someone with experience clarify that for me. Thanks.

So, I'm one of the persons who don't talk about devices they have never touched.

I tried many file formats on D2 and found WMA VBR reasonable but there is always slight lack of full midrange timbre in lossy wma format, so sensitive ears may catch. However, compared to any mp3's (maybe besides LAME 3.97 VBR) wma have much better soundstage and imaging. Unless you use 320kb/s CBR mp3, it doesn't make sense to go mp3. Only 320kb/s will have better tonality than wma, however for most people it's still indistinguishable.

 

[faichiu]

Use Flac format.

 

[Jimbo3b]

Currently I use .flac for archive and .ogg for portability. I have a large library of VBR mp3 files as well. Bottom line--they all sound good on my new D2.

The software that comes with the D2 will convert your files for you. I've used both Winamp and Jetaudio to rip my CDs to flac. I've only ripped one or two to directly to OGG. For conversion to ogg I usually use oggdropxp, which I got at the vorbis.com website.

For flac I use compression 4 (default on the iAudio software). I use quality 7 or 8 for ogg compression, and the highest quality mp3 VBR setting I could get.

I don't have any experience with wma encoding.

 

[MDDrew]

yes i would use wma q90