rplace Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 My only concern about WAV now is the meta data about the track. I currently have my so-so mp3s and WMFs catalogued as Artist/Album/Track number/Track Title. This gives great options with my audiotron for playing entire albums as they were recorded or random songs for every album for one artist, etc. I am sure the other players do the same. Can you get that association with a WAV file? Is that a function of the software or the file type? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scriven Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 The software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 All of the data can be obtained as CDDB. If you do a CDDB lookup of the tracks before you rip, you can apply the data in creating the filenames... for example, the song "Wish You Were Here" could be located at: Pink Floyd\Wish You Were Here (year)\03 - Wish You Were Here.wav or Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here\03.wav or anything really... all the data are variable-based and any decent ripping engine will let you use the variables any way you wish for naming. Now there will be no ID3 tags the way that MP3s have it, but the filenames and directories provide more than sufficient structure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tenorman Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 When deciding on a file format I would also factor in what application you are going to use for playback. In my case I perfer using itunes so my files are saved in apple lossless. When I first started I used wav files, they were big and the lack of tag support was a major pain. At the time however it was the only non lossy format itunes supported. I did play around with FLAC and other players for awhile but I could not find anything on Mac OS X that worked for me as well as itunes. When Apple released their lossess codec I converted all my WAV files to Apple Lossless and have been perfectly happy with this setup. Finally as an earlier poster mentioned and I would second go check out http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php their forums contain lots of helpful information on file formats, players, rippers you name it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 ---------------- On 7/1/2005 12:00:23 AM tenorman wrote: When deciding on a file format I would also factor in what application you are going to use for playback. In my case I perfer using itunes so my files are saved in apple lossless. When I first started I used wav files, they were big and the lack of tag support was a major pain. At the time however it was the only non lossy format itunes supported. I did play around with FLAC and other players for awhile but I could not find anything on Mac OS X that worked for me as well as itunes. When Apple released their lossess codec I converted all my WAV files to Apple Lossless and have been perfectly happy with this setup. Finally as an earlier poster mentioned and I would second go check out http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php their forums contain lots of helpful information on file formats, players, rippers you name it. ---------------- I would be concerned with copy protection when using Apple Lossless. I wonder if you can freely move these files from computer to computer, and I don't like the idea of being restricted to a single player software, and a closed format. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erukian Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 I would be concerned with copy protection when using Apple Lossless. I wonder if you can freely move these files from computer to computer, and I don't like the idea of being restricted to a single player software, and a closed format. ---------------- Encoder's are out there for you to use for free (free as in beer, not speech -- unlike FLAC). Also the latest Foobar2000 beta supports ALAC decoding and it supports its tagging format as well. FLAC's biggest competition by far is ALAC. Sure it's not "as" free and it's newer, and the compression is slightly worse than FLAC, it's still backed by a company. It's nothing like windows media lossless because it doesnt automatically tag DRM onto the files even if you encode w/ itunes. -Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 I am another one who has ripped his entire CD collection to Mp3 (@ 256 Kb in my case). I have no idea whether it was variable Mp3 or not. I used Microsoft's Media player 10 to do the job. When I first started ripping I had the choice of Mp3 or WMA (Windows media audio I think). the Windows media audio was upto 192 Kb/s - which, according to MS is the same quality as 256 Mp3. I chose the MP3 format for one simple reason - portability. It seems to me that whilst there are a lot of competing formats out there for storing music the ONLY format other than WAv that will play on ANY device is MP3. I now have 3 copies (aside from the original) of my complete collection. One at the office on the hard disk of my portable computer. One on an external firewire 300 Gb drive at home and one copy on 6 DVD's which can be played on the main system via the Pioneer 575 DVD/Everything player. Once a week a sub-set of the music goes onto my phone - where I have about 900 Mb free for storage on an SD card. 900 Mb equates to about 8 albums. I also have many albums ripped onto CD's (abotu 5 per disk) that play on the JVC DVD player/digital amplifier that has been installed at my holiday home. No other format would allow me to do all this. The phone supports WMA - but the JVC does not. The Pioneer might also support it - but I cannot remember. None of the units support FLAC or, seemingly, anything else. Audio Quality is fine - for everything but the main system - but CD isnt fine there either and neither is SACD so it is probably more an issue of the unit than the software. For parties there is nothing better. I put one DVD in the drive and have 40+ albums on tap from hitting play. If I use the double density disks that goes up to 65-70 albums. The points of this ramble are as follows: 1. Yes there probably are much better storage formats than MP3 - but they will limit your options for playback. 2. 256 Kb MP3 is actaully not bad in my experience. Unless you have a fairly high end rig you are not going to notice much of a difference. 3. Even accepting you do hear a difference - is it really worse to your ears or is ist just different? I have found several times that I actually prefer the ripped Mp3 sound over the original. It could be, for example, that some of the stuff that gets thrown out is the over 16 KHz sound which on many CD's can be an irritating sound. In other words the MP3 copy can sound a lot less Screechy. Just to illustrate the last point an audiophile friend of mine - who has probably the best ear I have ever come across took part in a little test with me. I played him the CD and the MP3 ripped from the CD without telling him which was which. He had to identify them. He got it right - 100% of the time, but, when I asked him how - he replied that the MP3 sound was more relaxing and more musical to him - he too prefered it. He also stated that as an audiophile of the community he would deny ever saying this if I quoted him - so he will remain anonymous. Funny thing audiophilia!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 8:22:41 PM meuge wrote: All of the data can be obtained as CDDB. If you do a CDDB lookup of the tracks before you rip, you can apply the data in creating the filenames... for example, the song "Wish You Were Here" could be located at: Pink FloydWish You Were Here (year) - Wish You Were Here.wav or Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here.wav or anything really... all the data are variable-based and any decent ripping engine will let you use the variables any way you wish for naming. Now there will be no ID3 tags the way that MP3s have it, but the filenames and directories provide more than sufficient structure. ---------------- If you use Flac, Flac supports a richer metadata format than simple ID3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted July 1, 2005 Share Posted July 1, 2005 I also want to comment on mp3 256 versus reference 44.1/16/2. With a good setup, Ie nearly any pair of klipsch speakers larger than bookshelves and a pair of seperates sub 1k, you should EASILY be able to hear the difference. I'm talking no brainer. Over 4/5ths of the original music is missing. Its a no brainer. If you CANT her the difference then you really dont need to be spending the kind of money a set of rf7-s plus say, a krell amp and pre costs as an example. Don't get me wrong I'm not being snobish about this. My wife can't tell the difference, or simply wont take the time to tell the difference. A small mini denon system with a small pair of mirage bookshelf speakers works fine for her listening needs. It all depends on your ear. I suggest you listen to ALL the different lossy formats and see what you can and cant hear. Also do it on a variety of tracks, not just one. The biggest hint I can tell you is listen for transitions. traditional mp3 smears the hell out of em. Picking a lossless format is different. Since they must all sound the same, pick the one that has the best player support for you needs, and the best meta data management. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorcilantro Posted July 3, 2005 Share Posted July 3, 2005 Good info here. To keep it simple: MP3 (lossy) CONVERTS FLAC & MAC (lossless) COMPRESS Everyone should check out J. River Media Center. Secure rip was tested on hydrogenaudio.org? to be a better performer than EAC. This program does it right. You can use Media Server to play files over wireless or use UPnP Server to play a stream to your Audiotron. Check their website and the forum there; the support is outstanding. It is the fastest handler of large libraries and it supports a ton of formats and a lot of lossless ones like FLAC and Monkey's Audio. My setup is to archive (storing as compressed lossless) and also have all the audio in Ogg Vorbis Q6 for my portable. Then you have the cd, a digital copy of the cd, and lossy audio on your portable (backpacks for Nueros audio player are perfect for this). There are some Seagate 250 for 80$ at Tiger Direct now, and you can get a 400gb Seagate off Ebay w/ 5 warranty for 215$. The 320gb Western Digital was floating around for 125$ somewhere, mot likely after rebate. Dr. C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duke Spinner Posted July 3, 2005 Share Posted July 3, 2005 Soooo... how come my VBR Mp3's take up 30% more bytes than OGG Vorbis ..?? is Vorbis just preferred more due to it Psyco-Acoustic model ..??? ................. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted July 3, 2005 Share Posted July 3, 2005 ---------------- On 7/3/2005 12:06:17 PM bsafirebird1969 wrote: Soooo... how come my VBR Mp3's take up 30% more bytes than OGG Vorbis ..?? is Vorbis just preferred more due to it Psyco-Acoustic model ..??? ---------------- Just like MP3s, there are various bitrates for Ogg Vorbis... and also it's VBR by default - the format doesn't really have a CBR mode. Vorbis is preferred because it's far more accurate at compression than MP3. If you uncompress an MP3 and a Vorbis file and compare both to the original WAV, the Vorbis will be much closer to the original. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erukian Posted July 3, 2005 Share Posted July 3, 2005 ---------------- On 7/3/2005 8:22:53 AM doctorcilantro wrote: MP3 (lossy) CONVERTS FLAC & MAC (lossless) COMPRESS ---------------- I'm not 100% sure I understand what you mean, but let me take a stab at it to simplify. MP3/AAC/WMA/MPC/OGG are lossy. They LOSE information for the sake of compression. FLAC/APE/ALAC/WMA Lossless/Shorten are lossless. They lose no information, they work like a zip file. They both compress so your analogy about FLAC and MAC (Monkeys audio codec or ALAC?) being the compressing codecs isnt quite accurate. Lossless and Lossy should be self explanatory enough -Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted July 3, 2005 Share Posted July 3, 2005 ---------------- On 7/3/2005 12:06:17 PM bsafirebird1969 wrote: Soooo... how come my VBR Mp3's take up 30% more bytes than OGG Vorbis ..?? is Vorbis just preferred more due to it Psyco-Acoustic model ..??? ................. ---------------- What bitrate were your VBR mp3's compressed at? What quality setting were the Ogg files compressed at? The higher the quality setting for ogg, the larger the files. Ogg Vorbis is generally prefered over vbr mp3 because the same file size for ogg compared to vbr mp3 results in less sound artifacts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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