Wma Files?

[rokdcasbah]

ok, it's been said already, but as a musician i feel compelled to reply.

--if it's not worth listening to at AT LEAST the quality of a cd or even a tape cassette, it's not worth listening to. good engineers spend hours just tweaking the eq's on someone's guitar tone, and when you compress a file below 128kbps you're just destroying those frequencies.

yes, the sampling rate stays the same, but lossy algorithms cut out freqs starting with the highest and low lowest, in order to squeeze more data. that's not to mention the terrible reduction in dynamic range...all in all it's like listening to a song over a phone line. even in my car or on a bad set of headphones i can hear the compression on 128 and below, and trust me, i'm no audiophile.

uncompressed cd-quality, stereo audio requires 1,411kbps to store. And nickspoon, you're compressing it to 32kbps!!!?!?! you're cutting out 98% of the audio data!!! god i hope you're joking. and drak, mp3's aren't compressed? are you completely bonkers!?

there are some types of music where the production isn't as important...prog rock, video game music, weird al but still...unless you're storing your songs on 5.25 floppies...of course, i realize that not everyone listens to a lot of digital audio as cd's are pretty convenient, but if people are saying that you can't hear the difference between cd and steamroller compression, then i'm just floored.

 

[nickspoon]

OK, just so people don't keep getting pissy over this, I keep 128Kbps and sometimes higher copies of everything that is really worth listening to, but 32Kbps is enough for me on a busy train when I can half-hear music. This is my personal preference, and I am not voicing that it is better.

Thankyou, and shut up.

 

[rokdcasbah]

ok sorry wasn't personal, just more of a WHAAAAAA??

also, imo ogg and wma are both much better at lower bitrates than mp3. and i understand listening to music 'at any cost'...these days my car's right speaker blows out quite a bit, quite annoying. and as far as headphones, i'm too cheap to buy a pair at the moment.

 

[FluffyPanda]

Except MP3 is a patented, proprietary format, and AAC (which Apple uses in some cases) is an open standard... Oops.

​

Not really. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_codecs.

Both AAC and mp3 are patented, AAC by AT&T, Dolby, Fraunhofer and Sony, mp3 by Thompson. Thompson does at least offer non-commercial users the right to use the codec free of charge.

Furthermore, both are standards (and even standardised by the same body - ISO/IEC MPEG audio committee). AAC was defined to be the successor to the aging mp3 format.

The fairplay DRM that Apple sticks on iTunes bought tracks isn't part of the standard, but is still DRM and the reason I'd never buy a track from iTunes. I really don't like the idea of having an iPod HD fail and losing all my purchased music... but that's another issue.

OGG Vorbis is a truely open and free standard, but somehow enjoys relatively poor device support. If my mp3 player supported ogg too I'd have a lot less mp3s.

 

[rokdcasbah]

my iriver h120 is a dream, especially now that rockbox has been ported...but i still only have 50% mp3s, 50% oggs on it because mp3s cost a lot less time and energy to decode.

this is one of the reasons that not many devices have ogg support...it's possible for a manufacturer to use a dsp chip that's optimized for mp3, but some manufacturers decide to use a more general purpose chip ...in which case ogg becomes an option but even so it is a battery killer.

 

[devestation]

Saw this on gpx2.com: http://www.gpx2.com/support/support_sugest...unho=17&part=00

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2. WMV WMA support issue
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WMV also would not be possible until Nov

At the moment we are testing it in many aspects,but WMV codec is from Microsoft,so it doesnt fit well from gp2x which is linux based.

Furthermore as WMA is also windows codec, so it would not be supporting.

However we've known that other company solved this problem,so we will do our best to support this codec after launching our product.

 

[Mirrorhead]

I use 128 kbps for music and 40 kbps for audiobooks/ spoken language. Works fine for me.

 

[Miika]

I use 128 kbps for music and 40 kbps for audiobooks/ spoken language. Works fine for me.

Bumping a 1+ year old thread and that's it? <_<

 

[sam fisher]

Its not even bloody ontopic lol.

 

[rokdcasbah]

well in an update to one of my previous (year old) comments, i did buy a pair of headphones, actually earbuds...they're shure e4c's and they sound magnificent. not as comfortable as headphones might have been but the quality is amazing.

ps 128kbps is evil.

 

[kevcal]

Well since this has been bumped

Sort of on-topic..:
I have a number of wmv files that I'd like to be able to watch on the move.
So is there a free wmv to 'gp2x-playable-video' convertor (eg xvid)?
All I seem to find are ones that add watermarks to the converted file.

Kev

 

[PokeParadox]

FFS, has no one heard of LAME VBR!?? I agree that CBR128 is awful, but I also think that CBR anything is ... well it's a waste of space.

Anyway I rip my music to AAC/M4A (never buy DRM'd shite... ick) since the compression is much better than MP3... I must admit for some reason that I never got into OGG... I use the OGM container for video though...

Back on topic... I couldn't care less about WMA(or WMV) since they are not a very good format anyway...

 

[Chahk]

i did buy a pair of headphones, actually earbuds...they're shure e4c's and they sound magnificent. not as comfortable as headphones might have been but the quality is amazing.

I have the E4c's also. They sound phenomenal, even in the noisiest conditions (think New York City subway ride). In terms of comfort, they aren't really all that bad. You just need to find the sleeves that fit your ears right. I'm actually thinking of investing into custom-fitted ear molds. I figure I spent so much on quality earphones, so what's a little more for comfort.

/on topic
wma = teh suck. Even a non-audiophile can really hear the difference between 192kbps MP3 and anything under 160kbps with a good pair of ear/head-phones. Of course the point becomes moot if you are content with GP2X's tiny speakers. It all comes down to personal listening preferences and hardware.

 

[craigix]

I think there is a WMA player in the archive actually...

 

[sparksterz]

I think there is a WMA player in the archive actually...

I do remember seeing that as well, but it's like an ultra test version, very limited, I don't think you could fast forward or reverse through the files it would just play them. But it gets the job done.

 

[craigix]

I'll take a look at the code and see if it can be improved.