Quality difference in .wma and .mp3 files??

[darekIsAwesome]

Ok so im getting an mp3 player soon (Creative Labs 256mb TX) and it says that it oculd hold like upto 4 hours mp3 and 8 hours or something for wma. Now i have both wma and mp3 files of the same songs. So is there like a real sound quality difference in the two. Maybe someone could explain a little bit about them.

O and thanks :D

[Admiral Ackbar]

Generally the latests WMA's have the same quality in half the space. Same with OGG, ACC, and thge newer formats. In other words, a 128 mp3 is about equivalent to a 64 wma or ogg.

Of course, people debate this endlessly. In the end it does depend on the ear of the listener. But I would argue that 80%+ of listeners wouldn't notice the differences between a 64 kbps WMA and a 128 kbps mp3.

[Trakan]

Generally the latests WMA's have the same quality in half the space. Same with OGG, ACC, and thge newer formats. In other words, a 128 mp3 is about equivalent to a 64 wma or ogg.

Of course, people debate this endlessly. In the end it does depend on the ear of the listener. But I would argue that 80%+ of listeners wouldn't notice the differences between a 64 kbps WMA and a 128 kbps mp3.

Personally, I use MP3. I don't know much about it. Is wma smaller? Can I convert my MP3's to WMA and fit more songs on my MP3 player?

[Mr. Anderson]

If I get an iPod, I won't have to worry about file format.

[Ledhed]

Is wma smaller?

It's basically half the size of an MP3.

[darekIsAwesome]

Supposedly you can fit about twice the amount. See now this sucks for me because i converted all my wma files(i had all my songs on windows media player.half of them being wma) and tranfered them into itunes. now when you do this itunes converts all wmas into mp3s.

I said that because now i plan to take all my different music files and create one big folder to use on my itunes, and windows media player.

Any suggestions on what to do there..and if i still have those converted songs in wma format by any chance?

[Alpha2]

Frankly 128 mp3's dont sound all that great in my opinion(I prefer to encode mine at 196 because I notice the sound improvment and the size increas is negliable), but you might actually get a cleaner sound from a wma, I just don't like the copyright protection function in commercial WMAs sometimes they can get in the way of regular use It's very rare however but it still cost me a bunch of time so I'd just convert my MP3's to OGG if I really needed the space (I dont :)).

[Admiral Ackbar]

Supposedly you can fit about twice the amount. See now this sucks for me because i converted all my wma files(i had all my songs on windows media player.half of them being wma) and tranfered them into itunes. now when you do this itunes converts all wmas into mp3s.

I said that because now i plan to take all my different music files and create one big folder to use on my itunes, and windows media player.

Any suggestions on what to do there..and if i still have those converted songs in wma format by any chance?

Okay, that's bad because Apple doesn't play well with others. Basically, you ripped a song from CD and it double encoded it. It's not good to convert one file type to another. Say wma to mp3 because you lose even more information. Again, it depends on the person hearing the song. But generally, this is a big no-no that most will agree on.

If you're going to use itunes, stick with mp3's. At least that's useable in both itunes and media player. While I have played with Itunes I don't use it regularly so I can't really advise on that.

[fireball343]

i hate wma's and rights crap, but other than that they have a ton better sound quaility

[darekIsAwesome]

So wma sounds better and is half the size? Hmm..any way to convert wmas to mp3? BTW i might just use my Windows and not the itunes cause on Windows i oculd easily transfer cds onto my comp and it plays both formats.

[epobirs]

You can create WMA files with several third party products. It isn't just limited to Windows Media Player.

MP3 is part of the MPEG-1 spec dating back to the 80's. I first saw it demoed on a CDi prototype development station back in 1988. It took a computer system the size of a SUV to do the encoding back then and playback, while not nearly so costly, was beyond system without DSP-like features. Suffice to say, the processing for MP3 involved serious heavy lifting.

Go forward almost two decades. Desktop PCs run well over a hundred times faster and have a lot of media processing specific features that mimics what once required a dedicated DSP. The art of mathematics applied to audio and video codecs has also advanced hugely.

Newer formats like WMA and WMV-9, MPEG-4, H.264, etc. are the result. The cost of silicon to decode WMA is only a minor jump over what was needed for MP3, so the choices expand.

[darekIsAwesome]

So if i have an mp3 and convert it to wma the quality will not get lower but inseatd get cut in half? BTW, any links to these erd party converters?

[darekIsAwesome]

Ok and ONE more question. I like ituns mostly for its look and windows media player(i dont know what it is but ijust dont like the layout) So anything out there that has a nice layout, plays mp3/wma, can burn cds with, copy cds onto disc(not important). Ive heard of all these other ones like Quicktime, and Realone. Any ideas?

[defender]

I just use WMA and the windows media player..I see no need to install 3rd party music players when windows has one that does it all anyways...

[Ledhed]

I just use WMA and the windows media player..I see no need to install 3rd party music players when windows has one that does it all anyways...

For whatever reason, I can't get WMP to play certain internet radio stations. Otherwise, I use it for everything as well.

[darekIsAwesome]

Wait can WIndows convert mp3 to wma? lol Cause if it does...thats all i need. lol

[Admiral Ackbar]

So if i have an mp3 and convert it to wma the quality will not get lower but inseatd get cut in half? BTW, any links to these erd party converters?

Okay. You're right and you're wrong. If you convert an mp3 to a wma a lot of things can happen because you're double encoding. It's better to rip everything to either an mp3 or a wma, or do both separately.

Say you take an mp3 and convert it to it's equivalent wma at half the size. Think of it like taking a photocopy of a photocopy. The 2nd photocopy gets grainier. Enough to be noticeable? That depends. It depends on the converters, which are usually more iffy than standard encoders. The best that can happen is that your wma will have the same quality as the mp3 at half the size. There's also a chance that'll it'll technically be worse but not noticably so. It's generally considered a bad idea to convert compressed files.

As for players. I like winamp as a basic player but don't like it's playlist setup. I've really come to like WMP in it's mini modes. I want it as small and unobtrusive as possibe. Personal preference. I especially like the Revert skin.

[Alpha2]

you can find all sorts of conversion programs but typing "(file type here) 2 (file type here) " in google, some are shareware but everyonce in a while you find free programs that convert what you have to whatever you need.

[darekIsAwesome]

Cool thanks. So any links to good onverters?

[epobirs]

So if i have an mp3 and convert it to wma the quality will not get lower but inseatd get cut in half? BTW, any links to these erd party converters?

Okay. You're right and you're wrong. If you convert an mp3 to a wma a lot of things can happen because you're double encoding. It's better to rip everything to either an mp3 or a wma, or do both separately.

Say you take an mp3 and convert it to it's equivalent wma at half the size. Think of it like taking a photocopy of a photocopy. The 2nd photocopy gets grainier. Enough to be noticeable? That depends. It depends on the converters, which are usually more iffy than standard encoders. The best that can happen is that your wma will have the same quality as the mp3 at half the size. There's also a chance that'll it'll technically be worse but not noticably so. It's generally considered a bad idea to convert compressed files.

As for players. I like winamp as a basic player but don't like it's playlist setup. I've really come to like WMP in it's mini modes. I want it as small and unobtrusive as possibe. Personal preference. I especially like the Revert skin.

It depends greatly on the bit rate of the MP# file. A 128k file is probably going to lose significant quality in the process since it was already borderline IMHO.

Another big problem in transcoding audio is the different approaches to psycho-acoustics used by the two codecs involved. This refers to the method of creating lossy compression that is perceived as full quality by a listener and degrading in quality graefully as the compression rate is increased. If in the process of transcoding one codec is looking for information the first codec threw away when creating the file it will play havoc in how the destination codec creates the new file.

[darekIsAwesome]

converters*

[darekIsAwesome]

epobirs so what would that mean to me then in general?

[epobirs]

epobirs so what would that mean to me then in general?

THa WMA has a big storage advantage for the same sound quality but if your MP3 files are at less than 160k you're better off ripping the source material into WMV rather than transcoding.

[darekIsAwesome]

Well a majority of them are in 128(whatever.lol). So would you recomend me to put them on mp3 or wma because the mp3 player can only play mp3 and wma.

[eldad9]

Supposedly you can fit about twice the amount. See now this sucks for me because i converted all my wma files(i had all my songs on windows media player.half of them being wma) and tranfered them into itunes. now when you do this itunes converts all wmas into mp3s.

I said that because now i plan to take all my different music files and create one big folder to use on my itunes, and windows media player.

Any suggestions on what to do there..and if i still have those converted songs in wma format by any chance?

You do know that practically every time you convert formats you lose quality, right?

[darekIsAwesome]

Ok just got the new Windows 10 and its great so im going ot be using that. Now i thought of a small solution to this. What if i burn them onto cds then rip them back onto the comp because usually it rips it back in wma format. Would that change the quality or size?

[darekIsAwesome]

bump

and what if you rip songs from a cd onto your comp. Would the quality get lessened there?

[Quackzilla]

MP3 is part of the MPEG-1 spec dating back to the 80's.

I thought it was 'MPEG layer 3 compression'?

And wouldn't it be logical to create a wave map from a sound file and then convert it into another format at no loss of quality?

[epobirs]

MP3 is part of the MPEG-1 spec dating back to the 80's.

I thought it was 'MPEG layer 3 compression'?

And wouldn't it be logical to create a wave map from a sound file and then convert it into another format at no loss of quality?

Specifically it is Audio Layer 3 of the MPEG-1 standard. There were provision for several different methods of incorporating audio tracks in sync with the video portion, as commonly seen on Video CD. These were all compressed formats that saved space compared to regular Red Book CD audio but each is successively more complex to achieve greater compression ratios. This complexity raises the processing requirements for playback. This was a big deal back when this stuff was created so it was several years before Layer 3 aka MP3 became widely used. That we can buy MP3 players for $20 today is good indicator of the effect of Moore's Law.
http://www.digvid.info/tmpgenc/settings_audio.php

[epobirs]

bump

and what if you rip songs from a cd onto your comp. Would the quality get lessened there?

That depends entirely on the bitrate you specify for the target file. All codecs that produce serious compression ratios are lossy. This means information is being purposely lost to save space. The trick is to get rid of the stuff humans can't hear and won't miss. Using more complex mathematical modeling techniques allows for greater compression without quality loss but this only goes so far.

Generally, the default setting for ripping CD audio is the bit rate at which most people believe the quality is comparable to the original. This is extremely YMMV. I prefer to err on side of bigger files. Storage cost is dropping at an amazing rate. I saw a 1 GB Compact Flash card advertised this week for the same price I paid for an 8 MB card several years ago. I'd rather pay for a bit more storage and have the space for higher quality bit rates. If I have to significantly compromise on quality without good reason the product isn't that attractive.

[Quackzilla]

If you convert them to midis you can fit ALL of your songs on an 8mb card.

The only downside is that they will sound like shit...