Billcoke 2nd Gear April 9, 2009 Share April 9, 2009 (edited) When ripping music from CD, which format is better, in terms of sound quality and compatibility? MP3 vs WMA? Microsoft website claims that WMA is better than MP3. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...userlocale=409# Edited April 9, 2009 by Billcoke ↡ Advertisement Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aurora 1st Gear April 9, 2009 Share April 9, 2009 I would say MP3..... The sound quality is definitely much better than WMA....... Compatibilty wise, I believed that MP3 and WMA are both user friendly...... However, if u r an audiophile listener, both formats will not be able to satisfy u...... cause during ripping, some sound qualities will be lost due to compression..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vroomtattat 2nd Gear April 9, 2009 Share April 9, 2009 When ripping music from CD, which format is better, in terms of sound quality and compatibility? MP3 vs WMA? Microsoft website claims that WMA is better than MP3. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...userlocale=409# Nothing beats the "lossless" format . . . . . Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mustank Hypersonic April 9, 2009 Share April 9, 2009 i agree that is why i don want any mp3 player if listen to earphone, the difference between compressed version and cd is not so big but if listen to car audio, the difference is very very big Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drumstick Clutched April 9, 2009 Share April 9, 2009 i agree that is why i don want any mp3 player if listen to earphone, the difference between compressed version and cd is not so big but if listen to car audio, the difference is very very big Agree on that. Difference between mp3 and wma would be the compress space. WMA is smaller if compress from MP3. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tkseah Turbocharged April 9, 2009 Share April 9, 2009 the difference in quality could be due to the bitrate recorded and the playback capability of the mp3 player.. I record the MP3 used in car at 320kbps and it sounds not too bad.. but at home i still play cd on my audio system cos cd still sounds better.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whyeme Clutched April 9, 2009 Share April 9, 2009 When ripping music from CD, which format is better, in terms of sound quality and compatibility? MP3 vs WMA? Microsoft website claims that WMA is better than MP3. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...userlocale=409# yes lossless best...otherwise minimum of 320kpbs should be acceptable...unless you use high end systems like rainbow/focal/dynaudio...then better stick to cd Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drive_carcar Clutched April 10, 2009 Share April 10, 2009 yes lossless best...otherwise minimum of 320kpbs should be acceptable...unless you use high end systems like rainbow/focal/dynaudio...then better stick to cd Pardon me for being un-informed, I have never hear of lossless.... maybe anybody can elaborate more? To old fashion guy like me, nothing beats analogue recordings (vinyls), with vaccum tub amp no less. For some true blue audiophile, it's not about how true or distortion free the media or setup, it's more about the musicality and emotion that can be conveyed better with rather traditional (obsolete) medium. Digital is still digital, not matter how high a sampling rate you are talking about, it is still a kind of "representation" of the real sound. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billcoke 2nd Gear April 10, 2009 Author Share April 10, 2009 Pardon me for being un-informed, I have never hear of lossless.... maybe anybody can elaborate more? To old fashion guy like me, nothing beats analogue recordings (vinyls), with vaccum tub amp no less. For some true blue audiophile, it's not about how true or distortion free the media or setup, it's more about the musicality and emotion that can be conveyed better with rather traditional (obsolete) medium. Digital is still digital, not matter how high a sampling rate you are talking about, it is still a kind of "representation" of the real sound. WAV format is lossless. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shull Turbocharged April 10, 2009 Share April 10, 2009 (edited) yup..WAV is still the best, only downside is the size(~50-60MB for a 4min song).. but ultimately, it's the speakers which plays the most part.. i am using SB Audigy 2 with my trusty old Cambride Soundworks Digital 2.1 speakers..all my MP3 rips are min 192kbps(those that i got off friendly *ahem* sites, min must be 128kbps..anything below 128kbps, i rather not listen)..the quality difference between wav and 192kbps cannot be differentiated on my speakers..but my friend using klipsch speaker on his mac tells me that there's a diff in 192kbps and 320kbps and wav.. Edited April 10, 2009 by Shull Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutsack Clutched April 10, 2009 Share April 10, 2009 i agree that is why i don want any mp3 player if listen to earphone, the difference between compressed version and cd is not so big but if listen to car audio, the difference is very very big Well, just saying "mp3" isn't enough. The quality between a 128kbps mp3 and a 320kbps mp3 is worlds apart. 320kbps for mp3 is as close as you get to CD quality without being too hard to find. I have some pay sites to download 320kbps mp3s. I also rip my CD collection to 320kbps quality too. I consider my ears quite sensitive. And I play my mp3s in my car, on my 5.1 home theatre system and on my iPhone. They sound pretty sweet to me. I have compared CD quality to 320kbps, and it's really almost indistinguishable. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whyeme Clutched April 12, 2009 Share April 12, 2009 Pardon me for being un-informed, I have never hear of lossless.... maybe anybody can elaborate more? To old fashion guy like me, nothing beats analogue recordings (vinyls), with vaccum tub amp no less. For some true blue audiophile, it's not about how true or distortion free the media or setup, it's more about the musicality and emotion that can be conveyed better with rather traditional (obsolete) medium. Digital is still digital, not matter how high a sampling rate you are talking about, it is still a kind of "representation" of the real sound. bro, u r obviously from the analogue camp. perhaps blu ray can finally rival analogue for 'the real sound'? i have not played hifi for sometime liao... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whyeme Clutched April 12, 2009 Share April 12, 2009 Well, just saying "mp3" isn't enough. The quality between a 128kbps mp3 and a 320kbps mp3 is worlds apart. 320kbps for mp3 is as close as you get to CD quality without being too hard to find. I have some pay sites to download 320kbps mp3s. I also rip my CD collection to 320kbps quality too. I consider my ears quite sensitive. And I play my mp3s in my car, on my 5.1 home theatre system and on my iPhone. They sound pretty sweet to me. I have compared CD quality to 320kbps, and it's really almost indistinguishable. bro wat 5.1 sys u using? some say need really high end audiophile equipment then can tell the difference between quality of sources. btw can intro the pay sites to download 320kpbs mp3s? much appreciated Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Clutched April 12, 2009 Share April 12, 2009 If you are really concern about music quality and prefer loseless formats, use either FLAC or APE. They are about 50% smaller than WAV files, can be uncompressed into an identical copy of the original recording, and there are increasing support for them on portable players. WAV format is lossless. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whyeme Clutched April 12, 2009 Share April 12, 2009 If you are really concern about music quality and prefer loseless formats, use either FLAC or APE. They are about 50% smaller than WAV files, can be uncompressed into an identical copy of the original recording, and there are increasing support for them on portable players. where to get FLAC and APE? just google them? free? thks administrator Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drive_carcar Clutched April 12, 2009 Share April 12, 2009 bro, u r obviously from the analogue camp. perhaps blu ray can finally rival analogue for 'the real sound'? i have not played hifi for sometime liao... Unfortunately had to cold storage my valve amp, turntable, and vinyl collections when my kids were born. Have not listened to them for over 4 years already.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Clutched April 12, 2009 Share April 12, 2009 FLAC: http://flac.sourceforge.net/ APE: http://www.monkeysaudio.com/ You can find more about them if you google them. I must warn you that there is no native support for them in Windows Media Player etc, so you do need to install some plugins in order to encode/decode them in Windows. The cool thing about loseless format is that you can convert from FLAC -> APE or the other way around APE -> FLAC without any loss in audio quality. In other words, lets say even if you want to standardise on FLAC as your preferred format, you can always still download tracks in other loseless formats and then convert that into FLAC. You cannot do that on lossy formats like MP3 or WMA as with each conversion, the audio quality will get worse. Hence FLAC or APE is the perfect CD archival format. In my case, I ripped all my CDs to FLAC format at home and keep my CDs in my store room. I also have a squeezebox(http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html) which is connected to my hifi and supports FLAC playback. So if I want to listen to songs from my CD and download collection, everything is streamed from my computer to my hifi. The disadvantage of course is that popular portable players like ipod does not support this format. So what I do is that I just use the program foobar2000 to convert them from FLAC to mp3 if I want to listen to them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tkseah Turbocharged April 12, 2009 Share April 12, 2009 i think most replies got carried away and did not address the question of MP3 vs WMA.. From my personal experience... At lower bit rates like 128kbps, WMA does sounds better than MP3. But at higher bit rates like 192kbps - 320kbps, I actually prefer the quality of MP3 over WMA. So for my car use is MP3 at 320kbps.. ↡ Advertisement Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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