I used WMP9 to encode a copy of Pink Floyd's Pulse. I wanted wma rather than mp3 due to it being a live performance and I wanted gapless playback.

To my dismay when I playback the music I hear pops. I encoded using the VBR option, highest quality. I do have a relatively old computer, PII - 333 MHz with 192mb or RAM.

Has anyone else ever experienced this problem? Could my problem be due to a slow PC?

Any answers would be appreciated. I did perform a search and all I found was someone else who had this problem, but only on the first track of a CD. I'm having this problem with the majority of tracks I've ripped.

Can you hear pops in the extracted wav files?

WMP9 doesn't offer a tried and tested secure ripping process like cdparanoia or EAC (and now www.accurate rip.com) who can verify a good CD copy and/or correct errors on the CD.

I guess you are ripping from a poorer quality CD.

If you want gapless playback with decent quality, i'd recommend mpc, ogg vorbis or sosome lossless codec to encode to, using EAC or CDEX to copy the data off the CD.

Just my opinion, the WMP series are rather "pretty" but don't offer the best soulutions when it comes to ripping and encodng, there are many better tools out there, i won't preach any, just browse through the forums to find them!


Cheers,

Kristian

Hi,

I just did some speed tests with WMA/ MP9 for another thread, "Encoding Speeds" if you want to look. Anyway what I found was that WMA Lossless was not supported on Windows 98 via MP9. I discovered that you can do it by using a WAV file and encode it with dBpowerAMP Music Converter with the WMA Plug-in (www.dbpoweramp.com). So if you must use WMA you could try ripping with EAC and then encode it that way see if it clears the pops. Just a suggestion, hope it helps.

Cheers

If these are pops/clicks that are derived from inaccurate ripping techniques (eg. using Windows Media Player to encode to WMA straight from CD), you should naturally rip to WAV first with a dependable program (I recommend EAC), and then using another program to go from WAV to WMA. You can use Windows Media Encoder 9 Series, though I recommend dBpowerAMP Music Convertor.

I did encode straight from the CD. Hmmm the from your comment obviously the ripper in WMP isn't very good, gee some of the appeal of using WMP9 just went away if I have to use 2 programs I might as well use EAC to rip and Lame to encode.

I listened to the CD and no pops on the original, so perhaps WMP9 is the culprit in the ripping

The reason I was going to use WMP9 (I haven't yet) is that it has gapless playback AND is supported on many portables. I plan on purchasing a Creative Labs Jukebox 3.

When I get a new computer (I figure in the next 2 or 3 months) that I'll rip everything anew to the new computers hard drive and had been planning on using WMP9 to rip and encode everything into wma format.

Is there any way to make mp3 gapless? I suppose for live tracks and any electronica I want to listen to that has continuous sound I could just keep in wave and do everything else in mp3, but that would really eat up space and battery life. It's not a very good solution, but it appears wma isn't going to do what I want it to do.

I'm quite surprised that no one else has had the same complaint. I'll try a few cd's when I get my new computer, hopefully the pops are solely related to an old pc.

The gaps between tracks, when ripped with EAC (gaps NOT detected), encoded with LAME and played back on the Jukebox3, are extremely small. Basically a tiny hickup you usually don't hear unless there is a constant tone between tracks. I'd certainly consider it a good tradeoff for its superior quality over WMA.

I am keeping a watch on AAC though, because apparently there is some support already on the JB3. Maybe once they settle on a container and get a decent free encoder I'll use that.

For gapless playback you need a player that can support it, I would guess WMP even playing 2 wave files would put a gap between them.

That is typical since just listening to a CD on a computer or an audio CD player will not usually reveal any problems even with CD's that cannot be ripped due to so many scratches or other defects, the problems are however noticed right away in ripped files.

Where can I read more about this, do you have a link?



The container is MP4, and PsyTEL's codecs are quite decent (both AACEnc and FastEnc), FAAC will become it maybe...

I have one of the 1st Nomad Jukeboxes (6GB) and I was also considering WMA for the albums I want on the Jukebox. I used to encode all my music at 96kbps WMA because I beleived the MS hype. Now I'm wondering if there is any WMA setting that will approximate the quality of LAME --alt preset standard so I can have gapless portable playback at a decent quality. Anyone have a suggestion?

WMA in its current form cannot come close to --alt preset standard unless you go for insane bitrates and even then I would hesitate to say that WMA is comparible then --alt-preset standard.

Not only is WMA mainly a CBR codec, which greatly reduces the possible quality you could have, but even WMA 9's new VBR mode isn't very well tuned and that would be your best shot at coming even close to --alt-preset standard quality. Like I said in another thread, this is basically version 1.0 of Microsoft's attempt at VBR and any computer user who has been around long enough knows that any version 1.0 of a Microsoft feature or product is basically very buggy, has stability problems, and/or just plain stinks.

You might as well save the headaches by encoding using LAME and --alt-preset standard. Yes it isn't gapless, but so close I often can't tell that there is a gap unless there is a real constant tone when the tracks change. Even then on my portable player, the gap is so small I never catch it unless I am really listening hard.

To me, that is a worthy sacrifice to know I will get constant great quality without having to worry about whether the quality I am getting with a Microsoft codec is worth the time I spent encoding it. Only time I would ever go WMA is at low bitrates below 128kbit. Makes sense right?

At high bit rates WMA is going to win because it can do lossless and LAME can't. Its just the middle range where LAME is going to win.

We're talking about lossy modes here and "high bitrates" mean 170-500 kbps. Unless WMA could go lossless at less than that it's pretty much apples to oranges.

~Dologan

chrisgeleven, do you use the LAME nogap option when encoding for your portable?

I know it has not really been developed or bug-fixed, but I'm only using mp3 for the files on the portable and will have either lossless, mpc or original CDs for backup.

I was talking about WMA lossy files, not WMA Lossless. Two completely different codecs for two completely different audiences. I don't think anyone in this thread is going to use WMA Lossless on their portable player since no portable player supports any lossless format yet.

When I said high bitrates, I meant lossy at around 160-320ish.

I actually don't know how high a WMA lossy bitrate could go, is it like Musepack and Ogg Vorbis where it can reach the 500 kbit range or is it like MP3's limit of 320? Can WMA use any bitrate for a frame including weird ones in VBR (such as 145) that Ogg and Musepack use or is it like MP3 and can only use 32, 64, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256, 320, etc in VBR mode? I would like to know, would be interesting to see how Microsoft did this.



No I don't. Never tried it since the last I heard about that switch was that it was buggy or not even full developed.

If you are interested in getting a lower bitrate for your portable player with --alt-preset standard without giving up much quality try using --alt-preset standard -Y. That lowers the bitrate pretty well without sacrificing much quality. Some people can't even tell the difference. Even with -Y it is most likely better with the vast majority of music then any WMA alternative.