[mattg3]

Sorry for totally newbie question but im really new to mp3.I have a creative zen xtra 30g.and want to burn my cds to it using the creative software they provide but I keep reading lossless is the way to go.First off where do you find lossless setting and how do you use it?Is it a download you put on your computer or is it a setting already found in windows xp?Will my creative player play lossless or should i just raise the bitrate on my cds when I burn them?.I am now using 96 as a bitrate setting.Thanks for help,all this is very confusing to me.

 

[RotAtoR]

Taking a quick look at some specs for the zen xtra, it appears that it only supports mp3, wma, and wav audio formats. That means that your only option for lossless is wav format, which is completely uncompressed. mp3 and wma are lossy formats only.

 

[iancraig10]

Try a bit higher than 96. I use 192 as a base to start. MP3 is a juggling act between use of space and quality. Although you will use less space on your machine using 96, in the future, if you decide to upgrade your headphones to something better, (Which you probably will), you will start to notice the poor quality.

I wouldn't worry so much about lossless. (Get a portable CD player!!) The idea of MP3 really is portable music and convenience although many people like to get the highest possible copy they can.

Try encoding the same piece at different rates and compare them directly and see what level of compression where you start noticing the music not sounding so good.

Then go one or two notches up for the future!!

If you are able to go lossless, you won't get so much music on your player (if it plays lossless). If you have the CD's, why worry? Lossless would be more useful if you didn't own a CD but we're not allowed to do that really.

Ian

 

[wanderman]

Your device dosent support lossless but it does support mp3. If you want the best possible sounding mp3's I advise that you download a seperate ripping program i.e EAC(Exact Audio Copy). This program has an amazing secure mode for rips. Download Lame version 3.97b2.

Dreamtactix291 is misticriver's codec ninja, and he has helped alot there. They contain tons of useful and relvant information. I wish these guides were all done when I started my overhaul. T_T
What to Rip to
AudioFormat FAQ
How to configure EAC
Foobar2000 w00t

 

[theexec]

I heard of something called WMA loseless.. not sure if it'll be supported on his player tho

 

[wanderman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by theexec I heard of something called WMA loseless.. not sure if it'll be supported on his player tho

wma lossless is only supported by the portable media center devices running that windows firmware. The only device that support it are I think the creatice pcm and the upocming toshiba gigabeat s.

 

[K2Grey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattg3 Sorry for totally newbie question but im really new to mp3.I have a creative zen xtra 30g.and want to burn my cds to it using the creative software they provide but I keep reading lossless is the way to go.First off where do you find lossless setting and how do you use it?Is it a download you put on your computer or is it a setting already found in windows xp?Will my creative player play lossless or should i just raise the bitrate on my cds when I burn them?.I am now using 96 as a bitrate setting.Thanks for help,all this is very confusing to me.

Well, first of all, I feel it's important to have a lossless copy of your CDs on your hard drive. Then you'll never have to rip them again since the lossless files are exact duplicates (ok, they're not, but for practical purposes they are) of the CD. If you change your mind about bitrates or formats or whatever, you can just transcode the lossless files to this format at that bitrate or whatever. If you rip your stuff to mp3 and then you decide you want to rip it to ogg, you'll have to pull out the CDs again since mp3 -> ogg is not as good as CD -> ogg, but CD -> ogg is the same as lossless -> ogg.

Second, lossless and lossy refer to methods to get information from your CD to your computer. Lossless means no information is lost. There are a bunch of formats that are lossless and they compress the data in different ways but are generally similar. FLAC is the most common one, Wavpack and Monkey's Audio are others.

Lossy formats trade sound quality for file size. They use psychoacoustics to minimize the loss of sound quality as much as possible. Mp3 is a lossy format. There are two things that determine how good a mp3 is: there is the bitrate, which determines the file size that is being aimed for. The higher the bitrate, the less information has to be thrown away. If you drop the bitrate enough, like to 96kbps, then there will be sound quality issues. If the bitrate is higher, though, like 192kbps, then you're giving the mp3 encoder enough to work with that it can generally produce very convincing results.

The second thing is the encoder. The encoder decides what stuff is thrown away and what isn't. It's as important for the right stuff to be thrown away, as it is for not too much stuff to be thrown away. The best encoder is generally thought to be LAME.

Look at wanderman's posts for info on exactly how to do the conversions. I use EAC to rip CDs to FLAC lossless, and then convert from FLAC lossless to LAME v2 mp3.

Edit: Well, technically lossless and lossy refer to ways to transcode one file into another format, but for these purposes it refers to CD to computer.

 

[Skylab]

And it's important to understand that there is NO POINT in converting mp3 files to lossless -- this gives you larger files but NO better sound quality.

The only way to use lossless is when you are ripping your CDs in the first place.

 

[wanderman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skylab And it's important to understand that there is NO POINT in converting mp3 files to lossless -- this gives you larger files but NO better sound quality. The only way to use lossless is when you are ripping your CDs in the first place.

unless your device dosent support a paticular lossy codec and you want minimize the loss of quality an addition of quantisation errors, so you transcode from lossy>lossless>supported lossy.

 

[Skylab]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanderman unless your device dosent support a paticular lossy codec and you want minimize the loss of quality an addition of quantisation errors, so you transcode from lossy>lossless>supported lossy.

This still results in further compromised sound. The additional step of going to lossless (lossy>lossless>supported lossy) does not eliminate the deleterious effects of taking one lossy compressed file and running it through another, different lossy alogrithm. It will still sound much worse than if you had gone straight from the source to the supported lossy format.

Of course, if it's the only way to play the song, then there is no choice...but transcoding between lossy formats, no matter how it's done, is a really bad idea.

 

[The_Duke_Of_Eli]

"How do you encode mp3 to lossless? "

You can't.

 

[wanderman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skylab This still results in further compromised sound. The additional step of going to lossless (lossy>lossless>supported lossy) does not eliminate the deleterious effects of taking one lossy compressed file and running it through another, different lossy alogrithm. It will still sound much worse than if you had gone straight from the source to the supported lossy format.

You shouldn't do it but it won't sound as bad as going from lossy to lossy. I have tried it the intermediate step can make the transtion tolerable. It offcourse dosent eleminate the loss it just minmizes it.

You can encode mp3 to lossless it is just not practical.

 

[Skylab]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanderman You shouldn't do it but it won't sound as bad as going from lossy to lossy. I have tried it the intermediate step can make the transtion tolerable. It offcourse dosent eleminate the loss it just minmizes it.

Gotcha. That makes sense.

 

[caramelsoul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanderman Dreamtactix291 is misticriver's codec ninja, and he has helped alot there. They contain tons of useful and relvant information. I wish these guides were all done when I started my overhaul. T_T What to Rip to AudioFormat FAQ How to configure EAC Foobar2000 w00t

I second that....

 

[breez]

What do you think happens in a lossy to lossy conversion? Or just plain listening to a lossy compressed song? It is decoded to PCM data (that is uncompressed). Therefore "lossy-lossless-lossy" is the same as "lossy-lossy" and won't sound any more tolerable