Hi,

I was planning to rip my cd collection in .wma pro 160kbps (or 128, haven't decided yet)

(I like the WMP ripper becuase it's a hell of a lot faster than audiograbber and CDex and I have aLOT of cd's to take care of)

If I rip it in pro but then play it back in a media player that doesn't support pro like say, foobar2000, will it revert to a regular sounding .wma or will the sound quality still be similar to pro?

Also, I'm wondering if 128kbps is fine condsidering I'm going to be playing back music on a Zune or a Creative or a Gigabeat with a pair of $30 Sennheiser headphones (nothing super audiophile in other words)

Thanks for your help and input.

There is no backwards compatibility. Either the device or application supports WMA Pro, or it doesn't play.

JFYI: foobar2000 supports wma pro. (it uses Windows Media runtime libraries to decode wma)

Not necessarily. Some mobile drivers for WMAPro (such as those in Windows Mobile 5 devices) only support WMAPro without SBR. In other words, the file might play back, but it will lose much of the high-frequency data. The situation is analogous to AAC devices playing back HE-AAC without the high frequency.

However, at 128kbps+, there is little to worry about on this front, as SBR is disabled at these settings regardless.

It supports WMA Pro 10, then? You're sure?

Yes. Open .wma file in fb2k and look at properties. For WMAstandard, "Codec Profile" is "WMA V2". For WMApro, it is "WMA V9".

However that doesn't necessarily indicate if the software is capable of playing back the frequency synthesis part of the "LBR" WMA 10 Pro (32-96 Kbps range), as the 4CC didn't change. If it uses the normal Windows WMP 11 .dll, you'll be fine. Otherwise you'll only get half of the frequency, ala listening to HE AAC with an AAC-LC decoder.

WMA Pro 24-bit format needs the WMA Pro 10 codec being installed ?

I could not get the Foobar output through its DSP 'slots'l other than 16-bit data when playing stereo/440kbps/24-bit WMA Pro or WMA Lossless Q100/24-bit coded files.

'bout WMA codecs 9/10:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...decs/audio.aspx

Also, the WMA @ low bitrate/16-bit resolution is not very good compared to mp3 (lame).

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f46/extensiv...-french-305987/

! Read the whole thread.


Juha

That link is talking about WMA not WMA Pro. They're different formats, so nothing there applies to here.

Second, that link is completely stupid, so nothing there applies to reality.