WMA bit rate

I need some advice. I'm planning to rip some cd's into wma to copy into a portable music player. What the lowest bit rate I can go that won't compromise the quality of the music? I have all my music ripped at 192kbps on my pc but the files are pretty big for my 256MB player.

Thanks.

Stick with 192kbps. Or get a bigger player and rip at higher bitrates.

Or pick less music and rip at a higher rate.

If I can't hear the background noises or subtle harmonic tones on cds I get disappointed, so I tend to rip everything at the max rate.

greenlight said:

Stick with 192kbps. Or get a bigger player and rip at higher bitrates.

Or pick less music and rip at a higher rate.

If I can't hear the background noises or subtle harmonic tones on cds I get disappointed, so I tend to rip everything at the max rate.

Click to expand...

What greenie said. Anything less than 192 is going to start sounding like... ummm streaming music on Amazon.

Plus, if I understand you correctly, you're thinking about further compressing music that's already been compressed. That would be a bad idea.

FWIW I finally got an Ipod and am ripping everything at 320 AAC. Sounds great to me.

from my experiences at work, most music are usually at 128kbps. unless you're really blasting the music at huge events, the quality difference between 128 and 192 cannot be heard. in fact, some music quality at 96 kbps is good too. it depends on the recording of the music and the type of music as well.

why not you try ripping a song at different speeds and listen to it and judge it by yourself? that way you can hear the qualities at differnt speeds and decide which is ok for you.

For some good information of compression bitrates and encoding methods check out the Allofmp3.com's information on audio compression:
http://music.allofmp3.com/help/help.shtml#top
click on #10 on the left

With WMA, you should be OK with 128kbps. With MP3, I would go higher.

But, it all depends on your preferences. If you value having more songs in your portable device over having sonic quality, go for the lower bit rate. You can run your own test - just rip a song at a few rates, play it in your device and select the lowest quality you are comfortable with. What is acceptable to some may not be for others. If you are playing it on low quality headphones or have some hearing loss you may not hear much of a quality difference anyways.

Paul

Funny, since I use music mostly as background noise -- especially on the subways when I'm reading or something, I can't tell too much difference between 128kbps and 500kbps bitrates. Try a test yourself, take one song you feel is a good representative of your preferred music and encode it in increasingly higher bitrates until you're satisfied.

If you're currently using 192 for MP3s, 96 or 128 should be fine for .wma files, just be aware that .wma files do sound different, are more highly compressed and requires more decoding power (i.e. greater battery consumption) than MP3s. Depending upon the output capabilities of your flash memory player, you might even want to try 64kbps files for .wma if the output quality of your player isn't that great to begin with, or the earphones that you're using aren't that great. The output quality at 64kbps is acceptable for output in many of the automotive OEM equipment and just about any of the earphones/headphones that are shipped with the digital audio player products.

Billson said:

I need some advice. I'm planning to rip some cd's into wma to copy into a portable music player. What the lowest bit rate I can go that won't compromise the quality of the music? I have all my music ripped at 192kbps on my pc but the files are pretty big for my 256MB player.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips. I guess I'll have to go the trial and error route to find out what's "good enough" for me.

with wma 9 i like 64bit rate why encode to high and waste space

Hi Raggie,

Would 64bit rate be noticeably inferior to 160 or 192? Quality is more important to me than size but I would like to optimize the space available if the higher rates may be just wasting space.

Thanks.

i would do a blind test if i was you hell on my sony atrac player i encode em at 48 bit rate if i recall and it sounds good guess it mater if ya have the space and what kinda headphones ya havei think wma is a great codec .for its size i think its better then mp3,

I never go lower than 96kbps with my portable player.

It's better to try it yourself. Different ears, players, encoders and earphones will yield different results.

Unless you have a player with exceptional output capabilities coupled with earphones/headphones that are also exceptional, chances are that anything above 128 for a .wma is going to be wasted. I'd suggest starting with 64 and comparing it to 96 (you'll probably hear a difference here), and then comparing both to 128 to see if you hear any further difference. Most people don't hear much difference after 192 with MP3 files. Insofar as .wma files are concerned there is little value in going above 160 unless you have equipment that is capable of playback that will allow you to discern the difference. And if you do have equipment of that caliber, chances are that you're not going to be fooling around with a lossy compression format like either mp3 or wma, but rather with one of the lossless compression formats like MLP.

Billson said:

Hi Raggie,

Would 64bit rate be noticeably inferior to 160 or 192? Quality is more important to me than size but I would like to optimize the space available if the higher rates may be just wasting space.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I like to use MP3 Pro instead of MP3 or WMA encoding.

A good rundown on the relative differences can be found here.

I don't know if the player you are planning to use can play MP3 Pro files or not, but you might want to encode a tune or two, and give a comparative listen.

After all, the best judge of music (encoding) is you and your own ears.

You might want to try looking at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org for more info. Check their forums, tons of advice on various formats, programs and bitrates, etc.

My min is 128. However not all 128 is the same. You can have a good 64 that "sounds" better than some 128. Like people said, it depends on a variety of factors.

Most players have a shuffle feature that plays the songs in a random order. Record the same song at 3 different rates and load them in your player. Set it on shuffle and listen for a while. If the difference is not that noticeable you'll know that the lowest rate is fine for your player.