Two Questions

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.   Thx in advance

^ 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.

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 ...


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 11 2007 at 03:10

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

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)


Boys toys,gotta fight hard to resist them!

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?

Thanks Mike.


You should start charging for your services...

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...