Two Questions |
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freekske
Forum Senior Member Joined: December 11 2006 Status: Offline Points: 339 |
Topic: Two Questions Posted: January 09 2007 at 08:02 |
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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 |
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Yes it is!!
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MikeEnRegalia
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: April 22 2005 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 21149 |
Posted: January 09 2007 at 08:05 | |
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freekske
Forum Senior Member Joined: December 11 2006 Status: Offline Points: 339 |
Posted: January 09 2007 at 08:11 | |
Thank you very much for the quick response
I have 1 more question, which lossles format is the best or are they all the same??
thanks again
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Yes it is!!
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MikeEnRegalia
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: April 22 2005 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 21149 |
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. |
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SolariS
Forum Senior Member Joined: October 27 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 891 |
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
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: April 22 2005 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 21149 |
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 ... Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 11 2007 at 03:10 |
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goose
Forum Senior Member Joined: June 20 2004 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 4097 |
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
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: April 22 2005 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 21149 |
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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bhikkhu
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: April 06 2006 Location: AČ Michigan Status: Offline Points: 5109 |
Posted: January 11 2007 at 05:43 | |
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
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin Joined: July 16 2004 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 11979 |
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) Boys toys,gotta fight hard to resist them! |
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MikeEnRegalia
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: April 22 2005 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 21149 |
Posted: January 11 2007 at 06:25 | |
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. |
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Tony R
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin Joined: July 16 2004 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 11979 |
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
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: April 22 2005 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 21149 |
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
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin Joined: July 16 2004 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 11979 |
Posted: January 11 2007 at 10:33 | |
Thanks Mike.
You should start charging for your services... |
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MikeEnRegalia
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: April 22 2005 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 21149 |
Posted: January 11 2007 at 10:50 | |
^ I can always add a "donate" button to my website ...
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Tony R
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin Joined: July 16 2004 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 11979 |
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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