I ve tried with dBpowerAMP Music Converter to convert a WAV file into a WMA loseless file but my Mp3 player does not recognise it.More than that , my Winamp won t play the file from my comp unless i make the WMA less quality oriented and more "compact"(i don t remember the word now,you know what i mean).Also i played a little with Advanced WMA Workshop 2.2 and it is needless to say that if i choose loseless at the conversion settings for the new WMA the same thing happens (AND THAT S THE REALLY INTERESTING PART) if at the settings for the forementioned program i choose : 1st Format type: Quality based VBR and 2nd Settings : Quality=10,44100Hz,Stereo my Mp3 player plays this file but so,so,so ever WRONG : like it is put on really high speed or something of sort.Oh and i should mention that when the WMA s put on the Mp3 player are loseless it reads the track duration wrong : much more that it is on my comp.Please help me as soon as possible,i bought this Mp3 player to listen to loseless formats (and it has some memory for that,wich it s not so cheap),i bought it a few days ago and maybe i can return it.Please help me,tell is it me or the Mp3 player can digest but 320 kbps(mp3 s or wma s,whatever).

I think that you don't count with the fact, that there are 3 completely different WMA codecs.
WMA standard (which can be played by most MP3 players), WMA professional and WMA lossless (both AFAIK can't be played by any portable by default).

Windows Media Audio #1
Windows Media Audio #2

I'm sorry if I didn't understand everything, English is not my native language...

Do the player's specifications say it supports WMA Lossless, or just WMA? If it says WMA only, then more than likely WMA Lossless is NOT supported.

You may need a plugin to play WMA Lossless files in Winamp, but I'm not sure.

It also sounds as if your player doesn't support VBR WMA files. How do you know it even supports WMA at all? What codecs do the specs say it can play?

Which mp3 player is it? Also, wma isn't the only lossless format out there and there are multiple audio players out there that natively support FLAC, OGG, WV (wavpack) and of course WAV files. i.e. Cowon iAudio X5, Toshiba Gigabeat, iRiver, etc.

You can also look into rockboxing your portable device. It's a replacement firmware that allows for playback for a wide variety of formats. Rockbox
JXL

Player's specifications tell something like "MP3/WMA Digital audio player" so your opinion on this matter IS the one that made things crystal clear for me!

I really don't care too much about playing WMA Lossless in Winamp,so no problem whatsoever there.

My player supports WMA files for sure(they have to be 320 kbps tops do,really far away from what i expected from it).The specs mention no codec whatsoever(not in the instruction manual anyway) but the internet is the last fronteer so there might be something about that out there.I just don't care.It is obvious that this is not what i wanted in portable player.In this one at least.

That's odd - usually any player that supports WMA Standard supports all subvariants of it (VBR, CBR). Are you sure that you didn't accidentally encode a WMA Professional file for the VBR case?

Here is the thing:some producers say that the player will play mp3 s that can be from 64 to 320 kbps/wma s that can be from 64 to 320 kbps others do not,so please believe me that after losing one night enconding and reencoding in any way possible(for that state of mind,after hours of searching)i,m POSITIVE that my portable player is the kind that the producers 'forgot' to mention the essential about!Anyways i'm going to start a new thread:after searchin through shops on internet i can only ask this IS THERE A DIGITAL PORTABLE PLAYER THAT ACTUALLY PLAYS WAV S OR NOT!!!?

There are plenty of players out there that will play FLAC natively, or can be made to play FLAC.

I m not from USA but from a country that recently entered the European Union , just for the sake of it , if you really asked me , but that is another problem , so PLEASE name some portable digital players that can play FLAC natively, or can be made to play FLAC or even better , play WAV natively, or can be made to play WAV.I won t find them in this forsaken country anyway but i want to look into it,i really want to know more cause i found none here so far(i did not search too much either do).Just name a few (i'd preffer WAV players,the ones that really play the files , and by that i mean that you hear the stereo lossless song you put on it in the headphones, and not FLAC , if possible.Thanks in advance.

mukuro
Well I think you should have read something before buying your player. And don't even think about using WMA. As already said, there are 3 different types of WMA -
WMA Std - Plays in many portables, but quality wise is far worse then MP3. And MP3 plays everywhere.
WMA Pro - Has higher quality then MP3, comparable with AAC and Ogg Vorbis. But has no support in portable players.
WMA Lossless - Doesn't play in portables neither.

Those 3 WMA types are completely different formats. It's just like original Budweiser beer from Czech Republic and the yellow water from Anheuser-Bush - same names, but very different products. :-)

So I told you what not to do and now what you should do:

1) Use MP3 LAME -V 0. I'd bet you won't be able to hear any difference from the original on your portable player.

2) Get a player which can play flac natively: Cowon iAudio X5, A2 and D2. New models Q5 and A3 should be on the way. Other then Cowon's players AFAIK don't play flac files natively, but can be modified to play them by an opensource firmware called Rockbox.

But anyway I think it isn't a good idea to carry flac files on a portable device. I think you won't be able to hear any difference between Ogg Vorbis -q 6 and lossless file. And you save a lot of space. Lossless compression is IMHO good for backups and as a source for transcoding, but it doesn't much of use on a portable player. Do an ABX test in foobar2000 a make you decision.

Btw. Do you know what does it mean a lossless compression? It means there is NO loss in data. So a flac file plays the same as a WAV file, there is NO quality difference at all. So there is no reason to support WAV files on a portable player.

FLAC players (scroll down for portables)

FLAC is "lossless". Meaning, it will be identical to your WAV files, yet save you space on your player as well. I'm sure you can order a player online that you can't find in your country(I'm guessing Romania or Bulgaria).

Also, theres a lot more Rockbox capable players now that will do flac: iRiver H10, Sandisk Sansa, Cowan iAudio X5 and M5, Toshiba Gigabeat F and X players.

OkeyDokey,let s get started!First and far more important than anyting i just have to reply to "Use MP3 LAME -V 0. I'd bet you won't be able to hear any difference from the original on your portable player." and i will say this:thank you for taking the time for the advice and thanks for THE advice,but i just might be able to hear the difference(assuming i m taking a blind test,"ABX test in foobar2000").So let s presume i don t hear the difference(i will always hear the difference between a lossy type file and a lossless one,ALWAYS,and i know i just started a riot but it s my superpower and that s that, 'k? let s just leave there , but when i hear the same sound,song,whatever in both of the forementioned types)it is just the ideea of heaving a lossless type file and having to lossy-shrink it just beacause"Lossless compression is IMHO good for backups and as a source for transcoding, but it doesn't much of use on a portable player" that makes my angry.Please understand,it s simple.I mean i wanna listen to some DAC recording of some '70s Floyd or Tull concert in a bus without having to modify them in the way that makes the effort put by the ones who made them available to me USELESS.I have albums that are cdda quality for sure and i just want to listen to 'em the WAY THEY ARE;it is the ideea more than anything:you have something good but you have to make a bit worse,no way around it!Well i ,myself,can not and will not do it and i m sure there are many out there thinking the way i do.I just want(and still hope to find it) a portable digital player that plays lossless type files(i don t care:WAV,FLAC,APE,i just don t care)but,and now here s the real gory part:DOES NOT have a TFT-LCD display,does not have a display AT ALL(i'll survive!!!),more than 2gb(30gb,c mon i ll have to sell one of my kidneys for that!),DOES NOT read jpg s or any other of such kind,plays mini videos,record,does the dishes,washes the car,walks the dog,heal cancer:JUST 2GB of lossless music in a pocket.Guess it really is impossible,they really have to sell 'em all or sell nothing that may be amongst them.So if there is someting small(2GB like i said is more than enough) and does just a little more than playing lossless music(has a display tops,TOPS!) then please,i beg of you let me know cause i m still searchin' and i m from a country that for a working class hero an ipod would be the equivalent of the cheapest new car for an american!NO WAY HOSE!

Holy Run On Batman!

I like traditional top-fermented beers, but as lager beers go Budweiser Budvar is very good.



OK. I'll take that as read.



Considering FLAC files take up very much less room than WAV files, you should care. You're going to get little enough on this device as it is. According to Wikipedia you get 30% to 50% lossless compression on CD-quality audio files. It's lossless compression, so it doesn't affect sound quality - you've still got bit for bit what was on your CD - but it does save space.



OK, so if you want:

• No display
• Small
• Cheap
• Plays lossless
• Small capacity

how about an iPod Shuffle, which fulfils all those requirements but is cheaper than the larger iPods? The capacity is 1GB, but if you cut your requirement in half it's an option. You could get about three albums on there in lossless format. (And if you change your mind about lossy vs. lossless at some stage you'd get a lot more on in LAME MP3 or AAC format even at a fairly high bitrate.) You'd have to encode into Apple lossless, which is not an open format and obviously not as widely supported as FLAC. I love Apple kit myself, but even so I prefer to use FLAC, because of that wide support.

I don't know about where you are, but here in Britain Apple is charging £55.00. In the US they're asking $79 (around £39.50). If you know someone who's visiting the States that's not too bad a price. Forty quid's the same as a couple of hardback books.

But I don't know much about the digital audio player market in general - there may be cheaper alternatives that also fit your requirements.

I know that but i was getting(and i m often getting) desperate at the time trying to find some solution;so that s why i said "WAV...i don t care".It would be wonderful if it could play FLAC files no doubt about that.

Given your rather stringent requirements, I suspect finding a solution will be a problem.

I followed Josh's link for a look and ended up after a few jumps at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/iAudio-U3-GB-MP3-Player/dp/B000COVZD0

There's a 2GB Cowon that does FLAC. It's reduced from $149.99 to $94.99. Even with the reduction that's still more than I'd pay for something with that capacity.

Can't you say the following to yourself?

"At home on the PC I'll only listen to lossless and not compromise on that. On the move, I'll adjust my expectations."

Your sensitivity to compression artifacts may be very much greater than mine, but on the bus you're distracted anyway. There's ambient noise - and all sorts of other distractions. Aldous Huxley once said that consciousness was like a valve. He said a lot of stupid things, but that one's rather good. You can only give your attention to so much at once, and on a bus there's much else that's going to be pulling at it. (And, anyway, why give your attention to the sound quality and not the musical development in the piece?) Here's an interesting story about another literary figure - Thomas Carlyle. He decided noise was distracting him from his work, so he soundproofed his study. Didn't work. He merely got more sensitive to noise.

What are you going to do if the bus driver revs the engine or another passenger has a coughing fit? You can't carry a weapon and demand silence. You could turn the volume up full, but that'll only damage your ears, and still not block out everything.

So go with the flow.

Your listening conditions will be less than ideal anyway, so why not compromise and go with a lossy format? You can still choose not to when sitting at the PC. But when you're out and about you're immediately in a position where you can (a) carry more music and (b) have a wider choice of digital audio players. If the format the player will play doesn't matter, you've got a lot more options open, and you don't have to pay a premium to get a player that is able to play more formats. Heck, you can still encode with LAME MP3 on what they call the "insane" setting - 320kbps CBR.

I have only one Nick Cave concert in lossless format(FLAC to be more precise) and i would give it a B+ reguarding the sound quality of the recording;now let us presume that the quality of the show is as it is because the guy recording it had some beers before the gig started,or the man next to him was very similar in appearence but mostly in the way he acted to an ape or they all were or he was sober and he couldn't get the front seat,you got the ideea.I will listen to it UNTOUCHED if i had to drill for oil,ok?I would not alterate downsizeing the sound quality of my only FLAC Nick Cave show because it is alterated already!

My reply to this:if only i could find the vinyls to all my albums.

I hate to turn on the PC to listen to music,i really do.Maybe i ll go walk my dog in my quaiet neighbourhood.What will distract me then?

This discussion over the pro and cons of different formats is senselessly. I think according to experience there are lossy audio formats which, if uses correctly, reach a quality, which nobody can play in such a manner with any transportable playing devices that he can constitute a difference. I do encode momentarily classical music with AAC (Nero VBR Q0.85) where, even with High end systems, i cannot differentiate the file from the CD. Even the "CD authenticity detector" (www.true-audio.com) cannot find any known MPEG artifacts. If someone for itself (from stubbornness or whatever) decides against these formats helps also no long discussion more.

By the Way - FLAC (as any lossless format) will ALWAYS reproduce (decoded) bitwise the same WAV-File that where used to create it. These formats just uses mathematical things to compress data as zip or any other file compressor do.

...umm yeah...i guess umm u re right;if i am labelled as being stubborn just because i have the principle of not listening to my music in a lossy format when i know i have it and i know i CAN HEAR IT in a lossless format(and i hear no difference at all,have it your way,proven by dozens of progries)then so may be it:i m plain old stubborn.But is there anyone there with me on this one?Anyone?

I've read this 5 times, and I have no idea what its supposed to mean. If English isn't your language, sorry for bringing this up, I just cannot understand you.

AFAICT, he's speaking to my comment here:



So



Translates to:

I now realize that my different requirements for a player are pulling in different directions, but I'm still going to ask people to look for something with all the requirements.

He's still hoping someone will recommend a player without a display with a capacity of around 2GB, that has a small form factor and that is capable of playing a lossless format, but that is still cheap. Presumably, it must be cheaper than the iPod Shuffle, too, since I already suggested that.

I don't know whether anything like that even exists.

The cheapest players I found are some TrekStor i.beat devices (mood and cebrax, 'bout 50Euro for 2GB). They play WAV but I guess for this amount of money you won't get high-class audio...

Otherwise: wait! Simply wait! Storage space is getting cheaper day by day, so it may be a good idea to wait a couple of months. The first mp3-Players had 32MB and were ridiculously expensive, nowadays players with 256MB nearly have disappeared...

yerma> I believe, that WAV audio quality of a cheap player will be far worse then MP3 or Ogg Vorbis playing on a good player.

...probably, but not necessarily...

I m thinking about buying one so i realize i can not get a cheaper device,OK?Is this English enough?
And i said:

And THEN i said:

OK,let me translate it to you:is there anyone who thinks that if they have lossless music then they should never listen to it but lossless,is there anyone there who thinks the way i do?Is this English enough?