WMA vs MP3

Alhaurin

Hi all,

Right first question so go easy on me!!!

I have just bought an Mp3 player and am about to rip my cd collection onto it. The question is in which format should I do it? I have a Creative 4gb Muvo2 which supports both WMA and Mp3. From what I have been reading WMA is better quality at the same bitrate in a smaller file so I can get more stuff on.

Could anyone confirm that this is the case and I would suggestions as to what format to rip the CD's into.

Thanks for the help.

Alhaurin

silverside

personal preference, i find wma slightly better but more tinny, at higher bitrates say 192k theres not much difference. Try for yourself.

loyatemu

wma at 64k is supposedly equivalent to mp3 at 128k so you can get the same amount of music into half the space

I have been ripping my cds to 64k wma and find it perfectly adequate but then my mp3 player only has 256mb storage so space is more of an issue.

Mailman

You've got 4GB of storage.
Use variable bitrate MP3.
Use LAME as a backend to EAC to rip and convert files.
LAME will give you better audio quality than the MP3 codec that comes as part of the Mediasource software that came with your 4GB Muvo^2 although it will take longer to rip your tracks.
WMA tracks below 128kbps sound very poor and are nowhere near CD quality.

If you really want to hear better quality audio then the first thing you should do is go out and buy a better set of headphones that do some justice to your player. The headphones that come with the 4GB Muvo^2 have a relatively good spec. but this doesn't translate into good quality audio.

Alhaurin

Cheers for all the help folks.

Very Useful

Mutant_Fruit

For portables i use WMA@128kbps. For storage i either use FLAC (lossless) or i use high quality MP3.

Michael Collins

Well a point to note would be if you ever plan on changing your player, you may not be able to play WMA format whereas MP3 is obviously a much more portable format. Although a large amount of players nowadays support both, there are still some that don't, such as the iPOD, or the majority of stand alone DVD players that will play MP3 files but generally not WMAs - it would be a lot of hassle having to re-enocde them from the CDs....It all depends on how much of a difference you notice between the two codecs.

Mutant_Fruit

i store all my music on my computer, and then use DBPoweramp to batch reencode albums for my player. That way i still retain my high quality mp3/flac albums on my computer, and yet have space-saving lower quality wma's on my portable.

Obviously this isn't the solution for everyone.

Whats The use of a variable bitrate

I just use 128 kbps on mp3 as its sipposedly CD quailty what will variable do?

John R

If you honestly can't tell the difference between a 128kbps mp3 and a CD track I suggest you visit your doctor to have your ears checked.

The use of VBR is that it gives better quality for the same filesize by using more bits when needed and less when possible.

Makaveli

128kps is not near CD quality.
I rip all mp3s at 192kbps. I would never listen to anything lower than 160kbps.

silverside

if you have enough free space on your hard disk, use dbpoweramp to rip and store the files in Monkey Audio (.ape) format.

This takes up about 5 times the size of MP3, but contains all the information on the original CD. You will definitely notice the diffenerece in sound quality.

You can always reconvert them to MP3/AAC as needed when you want to put them on a portable player.

I know MutantFruit just said all this BTW.

Mutant_Fruit

I just use 128 kbps on mp3 as its supposedly CD quality[/QOUTE]

Yes, the operative word is supposedly. Personally it is VERY easy to tell the difference between an mp3 encoded at 128kbps and a full cd-quality track. At 160kbps its harder to hear the difference, but i can still hear it, and at 192kbps+ i can rarely (and i mean rarely) tell the difference.

WMA at 128kbps is a bit better than mp3 at 160kbps, so thats why i choose that as my encoding bitrate. Its in the region where its hard for me to tell the difference, and it also has relatively low filesizes. And it's definately better quality than mp3 at 128kbps.