mp3 player virgin needs help

[RiderInBlack]

[quote=ZeroIndex;1122292 iTunes is a good way to go if you're ripping music off CD's[/quote]Find that Windows Media Player does just as good job, and it's WMA file type is compatible with DSE Players. Have removed iTunes off my PC as it is a waste of space as far as I am concerned if ya don't have an iPod. Why have more than one programme on ya PC doing the same job if ya don't need to

[RiderInBlack]

i thinks we should maybe have KB Music Trading day... load your laptops and meet at a cafe and USB to USB

Have done that with my DSE player off other PC play list (Thanks Neil). Was awesome hearing "Dire Straits" songs I hadn't been able to play for ages. Their "Love Over Gold" concert at Western Springs was the first live concert I had gone to. They were so much more live than recorded

[SARGE]

Find that Windows Media Player does just as good job, and it's WMA file type is compatible with DSE Players. Have removed iTunes off my PC as it is a waste of space as far as I am concerned if ya don't have an iPod. Why have more than one programme on ya PC doing the same job if ya don't need to

i just file them down into folders and sub folders.. i can find a specific song in about 30 seconds ..

also run a program called Tag & Rename .. lets me play around with the tags and dump my music folders down to a CSV ( Excel) file that i can hyperlink to the song folder

[cynna]

My question is...how do I convert my music to mp3 or wav format? I'm a complete novice when it comes to this. Is there software I can d/l? Or software I can buy?
.

cdex will do this for you. its free to download - just google it

[The Pastor]

I jsut bought a meizu m6 4b from ebay for 157$ landed, its mint as it has a pic of a motorbike as the wallpaper.

[SARGE]

Or software I can buy?

software .. BUY???

[Lias]

Converting to wav format will degrade the quality of the music. Stick with mp3.

Lol, first I've heard of that.

WAV files are lossless. They are the de facto raw format for audio data. If you convert an MP3 to WAV, you'll get a direct copy of the MP3 (with all the MP3 compression artefacts and hiss), except it'll be roughly 10x the file size.

Your both sort of right.

The most common format for WAV's is 44khz 16bit (which is lossless when copied from CD), but you can have wave files with lower bitrates which are lossy.

software .. BUY???

*grin* what he said..

[SARGE]

Your both sort of right.

The most common format for WAV's is 44khz 16bit (which is lossless when copied from CD), but you can have wave files with lower bitrates which are lossy.

some of the newer stuff ( soundforge and even the roxio stuff.. you can rip at 46kHz and even 52kHz up to 32 bit.. thats more for prosound applications though ..

[xwhatsit]

I jsut bought a meizu m6 4b from ebay for 157$ landed, its mint as it has a pic of a motorbike as the wallpaper.

Meizus are sweet. When they first came out, everybody branded them with the `Chinese clone manufacturer' label, but they quickly began producing some mint original hardware that is very good quality. The M6 is a lovely piece of kit, the screen is stunning. I'd just like more storage, I can't fit all my stuff as it is (just music, no videos) on my 30GB iPod.

The most common format for WAV's is 44khz 16bit (which is lossless when copied from CD), but you can have wave files with lower bitrates which are lossy.

It's worth pointing out the difference between lossy and lower sampling frequency. Lower frequency, lower bit width WAVs are not lossy -- i.e., they don't chuck out any data according to a bunch of rules, they are an accurate picture of the recorded data sampled at (e.g.) 22,000 times a second, opposed to 44,000 times a second; and there is only (e.g.) 8 bits to represent the data in, as opposed to 16 bits. MP3 files, being lossy, do not encode an accurate picture of the recorded data at 44,000 times with 16 bit resolution, despite having a 44KHz sample rate and 16 bit resolution, as they chuck out data based on a bunch of pre-defined rules.

The difference between lossy and lossless has nothing to do with sampling rates and bit width.

[The Pastor]

mp3s are smaller because they cut out all the stuff you cant hear on normal to midrange sound gear.


true anolog shit is like infinite in "size" isnt it? thats why ripping a tape gives you some MASSIVE files (i think i was reading in the gb range?)

[xwhatsit]

mp3s are smaller because they cut out all the stuff you cant hear on normal to midrange sound gear.


true anolog shit is like infinite in "size" isnt it? thats why ripping a tape gives you some MASSIVE files (i think i was reading in the gb range?)

Well the size of digital file you get when you rip a tape or LP depends wholly on what format you rip it into. A WAV file is only as big as it's sample rate and bit width. So if the tape is about as long as a CD, then it'll be about 650MB. In data terms, converting analogue data to digital form always results in needing more data storage. You can store a whole album onto a tape, but if you try recording digital data to it you can only store a few kilobytes, nowhere near enough to store the album in digital format.

Analogue isn't really infinite in size; what happens is that the resolution is very, very high and is not artificially limited like digital data has to be; there's no limit on the difference in pressure between two points in the track apart from molecular and physical limits. In practice, these waveforms, smooth and high resolution as they are, are very fragile and prone to data loss as they are transferred from place to place. So that's why digital recordings are used, even though digital recordings are only an approximation of it. The advantage with digital data is that it's very robust in transmission, so even though it is only part of the original data (i.e., it's only sampled 44,100 times a second), you'll lose none of that data while it remains within the digital section of your stereo/player.

So while you have less data, it's reproduced much more faithfully and much more reliably. So what you need to do is make sure you record enough data so that it still sounds good; 44,100 times a second is well more than most ears can understand, so that's OK. 16 bits of resolution in sound pressure levels is pretty adequate; a lot of recordings are done in 24 bit these days however.

[The Pastor]

are u a sound engineer? or a geek?

[xwhatsit]

are u a sound engineer? or a geek?

A musician geek -- and that which is most hated and reviled, an audiophile

[The Lone Rider]

Ugh, this thread has so many rumours and misconceptions it hurts my head.

xerxesdaphat is the most spot on with all of that, but not all of what has been said is accurate either.

There are too many points to correct but..

All audio formats come in variations of bit rates, and frequency rates, and types of compression. All of that effects file size and quailty of what you listen to - also stereo or mono effects file size. What you are listening to however, is only as good as what you are running it out of. A shit amp and speakers or headphones is not going to sound any different from mp3 or wav file.

Nitpicking about what has better specs for 90% of the world is a waste of time, as maybe 5% of people have the gear to actually hear the subtle differences between some things (such as the difference between 44.1khz and 46khz), and out of that 5% maybe 3% actually have the ability/training to notice. Unless very obvious, the average person can't hear a difference between a 192kbps mp3 and a CD.

Mp3 works using many different things to bring the file size down. My memory isn't perfect, but it involves psychoacoustics and frequency masking.

The standard CD format known as RED BOOK, as out layed internationally, is 44.1khz frequency rate at 16bit depth. Analogue is a whole different ball park and is limited by how your gear handles electrical current. For magnetic tape, it is limited to the amount of magnetic particles it can retain before it can't retain anymore.

Recording anything over 44.1 and 16 bit is a complete waste of time unless you have

1. Decent gear
2. A sound card that can actually output those
3. A large hard drive

32bit encoded files usually are 32bit floating point files, and are audio files with a dynamic range set to raise if the music dynamics raise. This is a waste of time if you are not recording music. You do not need extra head room converting files. Especially if you are ripping from a CD, which will be 16 bit and 44.1khz - you gain nothing.

I think that covers a lot of it. Fuck that was a mouth full.

And if you want something to ooh and aahhh about - my computer runs at 24bit 96khz. I thought about getting the 192khz card, but I think 96khz is doing me fine

[xwhatsit]

Dyers is spot on, except on the 192KBps vs. CD response; it is in fact very easy to hear the difference between the two using a normal stereo and a reasonably cheap pair of canalphones. Rock music no -- but if you listen to any classical or jazz music, which tends to be less highly compressed (talking about sound compression here, not file/data compression), it's very easy to hear the difference in quiet moments and in high pitch notes.

That said, I encode in 192KBps usually.

Dyers also brings up a very important point that the rest of us have neglected -- encoding something at a higher bitrate than it was originally recorded (i.e. an ordinary album off a CD) is very silly, and can often result in a quality reduction unless the new sampling rate is a multiple of the original sampling rate.

Transcoding, for example from MP3 to WMA or WMA to MP3 or whatever you like is also going to result in dramatic quality loss.