Jim Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 Is there a real difference in sound quality on these two types of files, or is it me thinking there is? I have been listening to some of the different files as I have uploaded them to my computer,and it seems to my ears that .wav files seem to have more of an analog warm sound than the wma files. I've only listened to about 20 songs or so so far, and they are different styles of music, but the wma files seem to have more of a brighter sound if that makes sense, unless it's my head wanting them to sound different. Looking to see how I should finish the next 500 cd's. I am using windows media player to upload these,and don't see anything with flac, but thought I read flac was better than the other 2,and don't even know if the .wav and wma are the same file type. It looks like they are different from what the player shows. I will be incorporating a usb DAC in a few days and a, wondering if I should hold off and get a program to upload the cd's in flac or not, or just continue doing what I'm doing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quiet_Hollow Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 Yep. Trust your ears. I am using windows media player to upload these,and don't see anything with flac, but thought I read flac was better than the other 2,and don't even know if the .wav and wma are the same file type. FLAC is not any "better" (or worse for that matter) than WAV sound-wise, but the files are smaller and the metadata a little more friendly to work with. WAV and WMA are two different animals. The former is a containerized, raw PCM stream and the latter is a lossy data-compressed file. I will be incorporating a usb DAC in a few days and a, wondering if I should hold off and get a program to upload the cd's in flac or not, or just continue doing what I'm doing. Stick with FLAC or WAV (if you've got the room for it). You can always distill either one down to WMA for the car or a portable player if need be. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brahmzy Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 Careful now. It depends what WMA file is being discussed. In the case of WMA Lossless, there is absolutely ZERO difference between it, FLAC or WAV. WMA Lossless is exactly as it says - truly lossless. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Posted December 25, 2014 Author Share Posted December 25, 2014 I am doing wma lossless as well as .wav lossless. I think I should have the room as I have a 1TB WD external drive. One last question, I have a bunch of old cd's I burned when mp3 came out, can these also be ripped and upscaled to wma lossless or .wav? Or will the DAC take care of that for me? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muel Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 Rip 'em again to lossless. What is lost to MP3 files is lost forever. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pzannucci Posted December 25, 2014 Share Posted December 25, 2014 I am doing wma lossless as well as .wav lossless. I think I should have the room as I have a 1TB WD external drive. One last question, I have a bunch of old cd's I burned when mp3 came out, can these also be ripped and upscaled to wma lossless or .wav? Or will the DAC take care of that for me? You will need to rip them from the original source, not the MP3 files. You can not "expand" MP3s back to the original as some information has been thrown away. Rip the audio files to one of the lossless formats such as WAV or FLAC. In theory, some say they can hear the difference though both formats should be identical when played back. If you have a fast computer with a good sound source, then you probably won't be able to hear a difference between the two since timing errors should be minimized. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Posted December 25, 2014 Author Share Posted December 25, 2014 Got it, the mp3's are probably about 12-13 years old, and were downloaded from a "free music downloading site" which is no longer around. So those won't even be added into the rest of the things I have. The computer I'm using is going to be used strictly to set up play lists from the external drive, so I've pretty much deleted most of the programs not being needed. So it should be O.K. It's a dell laptop with XP on it and I'm keeping the antivirus protection it has as it stabilizes the xp because it doesn't have the updates through windows anymore. Feel like a little kid again with new toys. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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