Ape to lossy format conversion

[nicknack]

1st post on this forum - forgive me if this question has already been answered, (did a search but couldn't find anything).

I've ripped a lot of CD's to my PC in Ape format, and now I'm experimenting with coverting them to smaller files for my iRiver iHP120.

I can use MP3, Ogg or WMA and whilst I can convert using Monkey to MP3 and keep all the Tags, Monkey looses the Tags when converting to Ogg (am I doing something wrong ??), and won't convert to WMA at all.

Anyway my real question is if I now use your excellent dBpowerAMP Music Converter to convert to these formats will the resulting files be the same quality as if I had ripped staright from CD to Ogg or WMA ?

I understand than converting from one lossy format to another results in an inferior file, but didn't know if this applied to converting from lossless to lossy - if Ape files are lossless, then is it the same as converting from Wav to lossy ??

Also what WMA quality setting in dmc is the same as Variable Bitrate 96 kBit/s
I use when ripping straight to WMA using EAC (Exact Audio Copy)

sorry to prattle on - hope you can clear this up for me

[Spoon]

Re: Ape to lossy format conversion

I think the iRiver has problems with Ogg tags (if you hold the mouse over the file you should see the tags are in the file).

Going from lossless to lossy would be the same as ripping a cd direct to lossy. Ogg should give the best quality (there will be an update to the ogg codec in the next 3 weeks, with the latest dmc you will be able to set an older tag writing - such as id3v1 which the iriver will read).

[Unregistered]

Re: Ape to lossy format conversion

Thanks for the quick reply Spoon - now I know that using DMC to convert from APE lossless to lossy would be the same as ripping a cd direct to lossy, I think it's exactly what I need.

It's just a case of choosing which lossy format to go for on my iRiver, which doen't seem to have any problem with the Tags of Ogg files I made using EAC, but when I convert from APE to Ogg using Monkey there are no tags (even though the Ape file has them - when I look at the file in Explorer there is no tag info.

Anyway - not a problem now I know I can use DMC to do all my conversions.


Could you just tell me what WMA quality settings in dmc are the same as Variable Bitrate 96 kBit/s & Variable Bitrate 128 kBit/s in EAC (Exact Audio Copy)

thanks

[Spoon]

Re: Ape to lossy format conversion

Not sure which bitrates EAC is referring to, there are different modes for WMA, a VBR (variable bit rate) mode should give higher quality.

Check that the option 'Preserve tags' is checked when converting ape to ogg.

[nicknack]

Re: Ape to lossy format conversion

Not sure which bitrates EAC is referring to, there are different modes for WMA, a VBR (variable bit rate) mode should give higher quality.

EAC (v 0.95 pb3) has the following WMA VBR encoding options, (as does another converter I've been trying, All to WMA converter) :-

Variable Bitrate 48 kBit/s
Variable Bitrate 64 kBit/s
Variable Bitrate 96 kBit/s
Variable Bitrate 128 kBit/s
Variable Bitrate 160 kBit/s
Variable Bitrate 192 kBit/s

DMC uses the settings:-

VBR Quality 10
VBR Quality 25
VBR Quality 50
VBR Quality 75
VBR Quality 90
VBR Quality 98

And to confuse me even more Windows Media Player help file list the following Variate Bitrate options:-

Smallest size - 40 to 75 Kbps
Small - 50 to 95 Kbps
Medium - 85 to 145 Kbps
High -135 to 215 Kbps
Best quality - 240 to 355 Kbps

I'm just trying to work out how your settings match up to EAC's setting, (eg does your VBR Quality 50 = EACs Variable Bitrate 128 kBit/s) and how they equate to Microsofts own settings ???

At the end of the day what I'm trying to find is a couple of WMA settings that I can compare to Ogg q4 (using DMC) and Ogg q4.35 (Using EAC with oggenc_aotuv_b2m), so that I can compare file size and sound quality to decide which to use on my iRiver iHP120.

[Spoon]

Re: Ape to lossy format conversion

dMCs WMA VBR settings will be quite close to the microsoft ones, ie 10 will be smallest and 95 will be best.

You cannot really pin a bit rate on vbr, for example rock music on vbr 50 might be 128Kbps and a story book (someone talking) might be 64 kbps.