Does WMA sound worse to you?

[Illah]

I tend to rip CD's through Windows Media Player to extremely high bitrate VBR WMA files since it's easy (like 300+kbps). The problem is they tend to sound flat. At first I thought it was just a particular CD but most of my WMA rips just sound flat! Hard to explain. Does anyone else encounter this? It seems the bass just loses it's punch, even on very bass heavy jungle tracks (a form of electronica if you're not familiar). Overall it just sounds less musical. Granted, auto-ripping from Windows Media Player is probably a less ideal way of ripping CD's so that might be a problem as well.

As a comparison I've been recording old cassette mixtapes through a Denon tape deck to my EMU 0404 with Cubasis and compressing to MP3, some of the tapes that haven't deteriorated significantly have as much (or more?) low end than the WMA files. These are 5-10 year old tapes that were tossed around in my car, left in the car on hot summer days, etc...

Input?

--Illah

 

[Filburt]

Well, first of all, I recommend you do some ABX'ing to isolate placebo.

Secondly, you may want to look at what you're using to play the files. You could try something like foobar for both the WMA a ripped .WAV file with, say, EAC. It's possible that something in the psy model on the WMA encoder (such as the masking threshold) really is removing audible information that is causing things to sound flat but, at those bitrates, it's also quite possible that this is some issue with the playback module affecting the output sound.

 

[Illah]

Anyone else?

--Illah

 

[chrisfromalbany]

try AAC or Flac is see if the same issue is there..

 

[Illah]

Will do, but my question is simply a matter of preference - does it sound any different to YOU? I'm just trying to get some opinions here.

--Illah

 

[halcyon]

At 128kbps many people (including myself) are able to ABX WMA9Std 2-pass (ABR) from original. Also, it grades worse than mp3, aac or ogg at that bitrate for many (including me) under ABC/HR.

I have not tried WMA9Pro nor at 300+ kbps.

YMMV.

Trust your own ears.