[Fallingwater]

My hearing is good for some things, but not for others. For isntance, I can't for the life of me hear the difference between mp3/320 and mp3/128. Some would call me hearing-dumb, but I consider it a blessing, because it allows me to recompress my music in ogg/80/96 and enjoy it just as I would flac lossless... so that's what I've been doing. Having my music in small ogg files lets me put a lot more of it on my 16GB compactflashed Rio Karma.
However, I was given another (much more pocket-friendly) player as a present, which doesn't support Ogg. It does support wma though, which if I'm not mistaken is more efficient than mp3, so I'm thinking of reconverting my entire library to wma/96 or thereabouts (I kept the original mp3s).
 
My question is: where does wma fit inbetween mp3 and ogg, efficiency-wise? Or, in other words, would I get similar results to ogg/96, or at least ogg/80, from a wma/96?
 
Note: all files are compressed vbr with quality settings, I'm just using the average bitrate as an easy way of identifying them.

 

[necropimp]

wma is not worth bothering with
 
you're better off using LAME to encode to mp3 if you decide to go with a player that doesn't support vorbis
 
in fact switching players is one argument for ripping to lossless on the computer... allows for easy transcoding of music to whatever format you want on your portable player without having to rerip everything should you decide to get a player that doesn't support your preferred format (or if you decide to use a different bitrate for the music on the player)

 

[Fallingwater]

Not worth bothering with? So it isn't more efficient than mp3 at all?

 

[magicalpig]

wma is supposed to be more efficient than mp3 at lower bitrates i.e a 64kbps wma file will sound about the same as a 128kbps mp3 one.
 
At comparable bitrate, a wma file is also of smaller size than an mp3 file.
 
What I'd do if I were you is pick a song you know very well and encode it in different formats, different bitrates, compare them while paying attention to the highs and lows and dynamics and decide if you hear a difference.

 

[necropimp]

Quote:

wma is supposed to be more efficient than mp3 at lower bitrates i.e a 64kbps wma file will sound about the same as a 128kbps mp3 one.
 
At comparable bitrate, a wma file is also of smaller size than an mp3 file.

the whole "64kbps wma is equal to 128kbps mp3" thing was comparing wma to mp3 encoded using the ancient fraunhoffer encoder and even then it was BS... and when you bring LAME into the discussion it changes everything
 
also same bitrate = same size regardless of codec used

 

[khaos974]

I seem to remember that AAC, or mp4 is the most efficient* codec at low bit rates, you can download a command line encoder by Nero for free, and use foobar to avoid the command lines.
There is an even more efficient version for extra low bit rates, the HE-AAC, but I don't know if the Nero codec supports it.
 
*by efficient, I mean highest quality for equivalent bit rate, it was the result of blind test by the guys at hydrogenaudio or doom9.

 

[necropimp]

nero's encoder still does HE-AAC but it won't do much good in this discussion of portable players since support for it on portable devices is a bit iffy (partly because it's a CPU hog to decode it properly) most devices just decode it as AAC-LC (at a significant quality drop) players with rockbox decode it as HE-AAC but performance on some players (like my e280v1) is pretty weak (the whole thing freezes every few seconds and the battery indicator takes a nose dive AAC-LC works just fine though)
 
also according to wikipedia apple's encoder added HE-AAC encoding since i last checked (a few years back)
 
now the OP never mentioned which portable player it was that brought about this question of lossy formats and low bitrates only that it doesn't support vorbis
 
it would be nice to know what model it is so we could explore all options... it's possible it does support AAC or it's possible it has a firmware update to support vorbis... hell it could even be a model that can run rockbox

 

[krmathis]

Ogg Vorbis all the way - as long as your player support it. Or else AAC or MP3.

 

[Fallingwater]

now the OP never mentioned which portable player it was that brought about this question of lossy formats and low bitrates only that it doesn't support vorbis
 
it would be nice to know what model it is so we could explore all options... it's possible it does support AAC or it's possible it has a firmware update to support vorbis... hell it could even be a model that can run rockbox

It's a Gemei 717LE: http://www.gemeitech.com/en/Products.asp?id=2&Act=2 (click on "performance" to get the specs)
 
It supports MP3, WMA, WAV, APE and FLAC. I thought it supported ogg too (usually Chinese players do, even when their product pages don't list the format), but it turns out it doesn't. WAV is obviously not being considered, and lossless compression is useless to me too, so mp3 and wma are the only formats worth considering here.
From what I'm reading here, wma/128 is comparable to mp3/128 compressed by lame? If that's the case I won't even bother with wma.