mp3 -vs- wma

Forum: Multimedia
Topic: mp3 -vs- wma
started by: torp

Posted by torp on May 17 2006,13:47

i am currently using mplayer in DSL to listen to my music files which are for the most part wma files. so far i have found that wma's give me the best file size to music quality ratio. the truth is that i am cluless about this, and if i can get a better result using a different filetype (mp3, ogg, etc.) i am on it like white on rice. so for all of you multi-media experts....help me to sever this link with the bill gates machine. how can i rip my cd's most efficiently? my OS and my mp3 player thank you in advance.....

torp

Posted by piccolo on May 17 2006,15:12

Hi
I'm not expert but according to my tests mp3 format has better file size to music quality ratio than wma format.
I recommend you visit www.wikipedia.org, it is really useful for fast answers to any technical question. For example, information about mp3:
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3#Quality_of_MP3_audio >
And information about wma:
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Audio >

Posted by cmanb on May 17 2006,18:30

If your beef is with proprietary formats, both wmas and mp3s are proprietary. You should use Ogg.

With Ogg, as with the others, you can specify different amounts of compression (small file size vs. better sound) to find your own personal preference.

Good luck!

Edit:

The other downside of wmas is that Windows Media Player sometimes automatically inserts some kind of timer into those files, making them unusable after a certain amount of time, or after a certain action. (For example, if you're paying for a service like Napster, you may be required to Sync your media player every month or the files will become unusable.)

You know, I was going to try to remain rational, but I'll come right out and say it: Both WMAs and MP3s are BAD. I don't like them. Use Oggs.

Posted by tuxedo on May 17 2006,18:54

well, ogg is free, with a good compression rate and (i'm no expert in sound either) has a good sound quality. so why not use ogg?
personally, it's the only sound format i use, even when i have to use some machine whith windows installed on it.

Posted by torp on May 17 2006,18:54

i wonder if ogg's will play on my SanDisk e140 mp3 player? and is there a program that i can use to rip cd's into ogg's? i hear a rumble about LAME. my understanding is that is a console based encoder. i'll be checking yon wiki....

torp

Posted by torp on May 17 2006,19:20

well crapola. ogg is not supported on my sandisk e140. so i guess i'd better learn how to tweak the mp3 encoding process.

Quote

We filled up the device with about 320 MBs of mp3s and a few WMAs we had around. Ogg is not supported, unfortunately (I tried it). Mp3s played without a hitch. Not all of our WMAs worked, though. The old sample I had (from 2000) that was using '20 kbps, 44 kHz, mono' did not play back, while the high bitrate 212 Kbps ZZTop song we encoded with WMP9 did play fine. I will give the Sansa the benefit of the doubt, though, in this case, as that old WMA might have been encoded with bugs in it.

i have had zerp problems with wma's, but i don't want to support anything winblows....

torp

Posted by mikshaw on May 17 2006,21:03

Quote (torp @ May 17 2006,14:54)

is there a program that i can use to rip cd's into ogg's? i hear a rumble about LAME. my understanding is that is a console based encoder.

lame is console, but most gui rippers/encoders give you a graphical interface to it so you don't need to use the command line. Grip is probably the most popular gtk app, but there is also dekagen/cdparanoia (libmp3lame not included) and I think k3b has an encoder too.

Keep in mind that if you re-encode wma or ogg into mp3 or vice versa, you will not be able to get the same quality as the orignal file. They each use a different method of compression, and different parts of the audio will be compressed...hence an added loss of audio quality.

Posted by tuxedo on May 17 2006,21:42

Quote (torp @ May 17 2006,14:54)

to rip cd's ito ogg, i use a soft lie k3b (therme must be maby other ways to do that), it rips cd's into wav, and then i use something like that to convert .wav into ogg:

#!/bin/bash
for a in *.wav; do n=`echo $a | cut -d. -f1`.wav; oggenc -q 7 "$a" "$n"; done

oggenc is a free oggencoder, most linux distributions have it ouf from the box... the option -q 7 is for quality level 7, it ranges from 1 to 10.

I run this script from my music directory and every .wav is converted to .ogg

Posted by cbagger01 on May 18 2006,16:45

Since disk space is so cheap these days, your best bet is to encode your music CDs to your hard drive in an open, lossless format like FLAC

You can then transcode from your hard drive file format into your favorite flavor-of-the-week lossy format. So if next month you buy an iPOD, you can convert on-the-fly into AAC or MP3 or even ALAC and then download them into your player.

Just my $0.02

Posted by torp on May 25 2006,12:59

disk space is certainly cheaper these days, but still a little pricey in the 2.5" form factor. i just ripped my first .oog yesterday, it sounded lousy and came in at 15.8mb as compared to a great sounding .wma at 6.1mb. seems i need to tune the settings of GRIP. still working this looking to come up with a good-as-wma mp3 encoding.

torp

Posted by cbagger01 on May 27 2006,17:30

There are many tweaks to the ogg Vorbis encoder to improve perceived sound quality and save disk space. A good starting point is to read up here

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis >

Posted by torp on May 29 2006,22:53

cool, will check it out. ty

torp

Posted by torp on June 01 2006,14:35

think i have it down to a science now. 128kbs, 4:41 song down to 3.37mb. lame is wonderful, though the documentation is really lacking. hopefully sandisk will upgrade firmware so i can play the ogg's on my mp3 player........

torp