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freekske View Drop Down
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Points: 339 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: Two Questions
    Posted: January 09 2007 at 08:02
I've been trying to improve the qualtity of the music stored on my hard drive lately and I stumble on these questions:
 
1. Is it possible to covert mp3's to a lossles format?? If so would it Improve its quality??
 
2. In the preferences on iTunes theres a option to enhance the sound. My question is: How excatly does iTunes enhance the sound???
 
Thx in advance


Edited by freekske - January 09 2007 at 08:04
Yes it is!!
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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down
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Points: 21211 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2007 at 08:05
Originally posted by freekske freekske wrote:

I've been trying to improve the qualtity of the music stored on my hard drive lately and I stumble on these questions:
 
1. Is it possible to covert mp3's to a lossles format?? If so would it Improve it quality??

No. The quality loss happens during encoding, you can't "magically" restore it later. The only solution is to delete the files, and rip the CDs again.
 
2. In the preferences on iTunes theres a option to enhancen the sound. My question is: How excatly does iTunes ehance the sound???

I don't know ... I *hate* iTunes, tried it once and deleted it a few days later.Embarrassed
 
Thx in advance
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freekske View Drop Down
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Points: 339 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2007 at 08:11
Originally posted by MikeEnRegalia MikeEnRegalia wrote:

Originally posted by freekske freekske wrote:

I've been trying to improve the qualtity of the music stored on my hard drive lately and I stumble on these questions:
 
1. Is it possible to covert mp3's to a lossles format?? If so would it Improve it quality??

No. The quality loss happens during encoding, you can't "magically" restore it later. The only solution is to delete the files, and rip the CDs again.
 
2. In the preferences on iTunes theres a option to enhancen the sound. My question is: How excatly does iTunes ehance the sound???

I don't know ... I *hate* iTunes, tried it once and deleted it a few days later.Embarrassed
 
Thx in advance
 
Thank you very much for the quick responseClap
 
I have 1 more question, which lossles format is the best or are they all the same??
 
thanks again
Yes it is!!
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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down
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Points: 21211 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2007 at 08:40
^ as far as the sound quality is concerned the lossless formats are identical ... the original data is preserved 100%. Which one is best depends on how you are going to use the files:

If you have an iPod you might favor Apple Lossless ...

If you have Windows XP/Vista and a player which can play WMA Lossless, then you should choose that format ...

If you are using Unix/Linux you should proably use FLAC.

Smile
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SolariS View Drop Down
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Points: 891 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2007 at 09:50


Make sure you have a large hard drive if youre going lossless. Your music will only compress from WAV format by about 50%. I second flac by the way. Not really because it's better, but I think it's rapidly becoming the most widely used lossless format.
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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down
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Points: 21211 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 09 2007 at 10:19
I was using WMA Lossless for some time two years ago ... then I deleted the files and switched to mp3 64-320VBR,q=0,Joint-Stereo. Reason: a) my hard drive wasn't big enough and more importantly b) my portable player doesn't support it.

And even if today I bought a mobile player which supports a Lossless format, I wouldn't use it ... the difference in audio quality is not that huge, particularly not on a portable player, even with good headphones.

Maybe when I have a 2TB harddrive ... Wink


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 11 2007 at 03:10
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goose View Drop Down
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Points: 4097 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 10 2007 at 18:51
What iTunes does there (I believe), in common with some modern sound cards is to boost some frequencies, making the music sound more "exciting". I wouldn't really recommend using this at all, and certainly not if your sound card is doing it as well.
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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down
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Points: 21211 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 03:11
^ I think that whatever can be done to "enhance" the sound should be done during playback, not during encoding.
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Points: 5109 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 05:43
Originally posted by MikeEnRegalia MikeEnRegalia wrote:

^ I think that whatever can be done to "enhance" the sound should be done during playback, not during encoding.

    
That's all it does. It doesn't actually alter the file. I also agree with your statement about lossless and portable players. The difference is almost undetectable when casually listening. Keeping a backup file in that format may be a good idea. Those are the ones you should use to burn CDs with.
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Tony R View Drop Down
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Points: 11979 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 06:02
Yes, the best idea would be to save the original CD to hard disc in Lossless Format then convert to 320kbs MP3 for uploading on the MP3 player. Once it is on the player the 320kbs file can be deleted from the hard drive to save space.

I was going to buy one of those excellent looking Creative Zen W 30GB Video/Music Players:


Creative's Zen Vision W is the widescreen multimedia MP3 player for movies, music and photos. Its high-gloss, scratch-resistant 16: 9 display with adjustment makes all content fit the entire screen, and its large hard disk stores up to 120 hours of movies, 15000 songs or many thousands of photos. The player has a Compact Flash slot for the transfer of stills from digital cameras, and it supports popular movie and audio formats as well as Album Art and customized wallpapers. Additional features include a built-in FM radio, a microphone for live recording, and connectivity to external TVs and speakers.

but then it occurred to me that there would be very few instances when I would get the opportunity to actually watch video on a player like that;I dont tend to use public transport and I often work through my lunch break at work. I already own a 20GB Zen (which playes WMA (incl Lossless) formats also)


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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down
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Points: 21211 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 06:25
Originally posted by Tony R Tony R wrote:

Yes, the best idea would be to save the original CD to hard disc in Lossless Format then convert to 320kbs MP3 for uploading on the MP3 player. Once it is on the player the 320kbs file can be deleted from the hard drive to save space.


That's too cumbersome for me. If the media player was able to do this on-the-fly encoding transparently, I would do it just like you describe. But I want to be able to quickly upload an album onto my player in the morning when I'm about to leave the house and only have like a 5 minute window to catch my train ... so I rather spend some time to properly encode my files with superior quality and leave them on my HD so I can transfer them quickly when I need them.

I think that with the next generation of computers (quad core + next version of media player software, WMP 12 / Winamp 6) this will be possible.Smile
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Tony R View Drop Down
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Points: 11979 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 10:07
A tangential point from the post above Mike, does copying the files degrade them, I heard it does.

Eg, I would copy the wma lossless then convert to 320 kbs. Would this degrade the original?
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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down
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Points: 21211 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 10:11
^ no. "Lossless" can be taken literally ... provided that it was extracted from the CD properly, the quality will be identical to the CD. Making copies of the Lossless file has no impact on the file, and neither is there any difference between ripping from the CD (CD -> WAV -> MP3) and ripping from the Lossless file (LOSSLESS -> WAV -> MP3), as CD = LOSSLESS. 

Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 11 2007 at 10:12
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Tony R View Drop Down
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Points: 11979 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 10:33
Thanks Mike.


You should start charging for your services...
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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down
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Points: 21211 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 10:50
^ I can always add a "donate" button to my website ... LOL
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Tony R View Drop Down
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Points: 11979 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: January 11 2007 at 10:54
Actually both the Rush and PT forums I visit regularly have donate options (I did) and I am pretty certain I donated to ProgArchives once.

Max is currently vacationing in the West Indies...
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