wma verses mp3 (numpty)

Now show me a plumbing / shower problem im your man. computers now i know what a mouse is and little bits like that.
Wma lossless verses Wav which is the better to rip in, when playing back though hifi mp3 sounds rubbish
Mp3 is good for portability as a small file (mp3 player is only 2gig) and little headphones you cannot tell the difference
Now if i rip in wma or wav onto the pc can i then change that into an mp3 for the archos that i use daily and if so will i require some free software to do it. Thanks

Lossless, whatever the type.

I think “flac” is supposed to be quite well compressed (but still no loss), so might be better if you’re using lots of files (and don’t have masses of disc space to play with)

That’s what a mate uses all the time. But choosing an mp3 player better than winamp also helps. Foobar seems louder and clearer.

For music, some form of lossless is invariably the best way to go. A couple of months ago, I did a bit of faffing around with MP3, WMA & AAC codecs

The following is virtually a copy & paste from a post I entered on the anythingbutipod.com forum…..

As regards to sound quality….In this last week I’ve been putting a seemingly awful lot of time into the various pro’s & con’s of .wma, .mp3, & AAC ( as used by Apple)

I won’t bore you with all the details of what I’ve been doing, eg hacking windows registry to allow media player to import at 320 as opposed to 192 (.wma) etc but ( from a sound quality perspective) my conclusions are as follows …

At lower bit rates .wma is better than MP3
As the bit rate increases, the situations are reversed & MP3 comes out on top (….caveat being the codec of the .mp3 being one of the newer “lame” versions as opposed to the Fraunhofer version as seems to be used in Windows Media Player 11 – Vista)

& best sounding of the lot ( bitrate’s being equal), seems to be the AAC codec as used by Apple
I tested the above using my Senheisser earbuds & also my Naim Pre & Power kit.

It all started getting a bit too nerdy for me, so I stopped playing ( Sorry….performing valuable Research & Development) at this point.

Since my Zen V Plus is unable to support AAC, I’ve personally settled on MP3 – 256 VBR, set at very high quality ( …min 256 but able to go to 320 should the need arise)

For ripping cd’s I’ve settled on using CDex or EAC…..along with one of the newer lame versions

Chris

Oh,

I found that, in the sound quality stakes, the point where MP3 takes over from WMA is somewhere between 128 & 192.

If you need a lossy Codec & your Archos will support AAC, then I would suggest you experiment with this in preference to MP3 or WMA.

But, as mentioned above, Lossless is better long term.

Chris