WMA lossless or flac

[Qwaz]

WMA lossless or flac

which is better and why?

is there any quality difference between these and a wav file (i presume no)

and is wma lossless easy to use and convert to and from

[Spoons]

Re: WMA lossless or flac

i found this comparison chart that would be of interest.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=29655

[Qwaz]

Re: WMA lossless or flac

i have a creative zen extra, should i convert all my music from wavs to lossless wma?

if i do is there any way for me to do a direct batch coversion...

eg if i have folders like this

Music
-Album 1
-- A1 - Track 1
-- A1 - Track 2
-- A1 - Track 3
-Album 2
-- A2 - Track 1
-- A2 - Track 2

can i convert them so the track come out in the same folders not just all in one folder (obviously i have far more than 5 tracks in 2 albums lol)

[Spoon]

Re: WMA lossless or flac

I don't think the Creative will play WMA Lossless.

[Qwaz]

Re: WMA lossless or flac

its in the creative adio converter thingy and it says it play wma, my new zen xtra is charging but soon i will try

what about the direct bacth convertion i was tlking about earlier

[LtData]

Re: WMA lossless or flac

its in the creative adio converter thingy and it says it play wma, my new zen xtra is charging but soon i will try

WMA lossless is a new type of .wma files. WMA lossless was introduced with WMP 10, so if your player came out before then, WMA lossless is not supported. If you are still wondering, you could try e-mailing Creative Tech Support and see what they say.

[MikeCerm]

Re: WMA lossless or flac

WMA lossless or flac

which is better and why?

is there any quality difference between these and a wav file (i presume no)

and is wma lossless easy to use and convert to and from

As far as the difference between WMA Lossless and Flac, there are a few differences. Flac is an open source format, so if you support it, you can feel like you're doing something noble. Also, it's more customizable, in that you can make files really quickly by decreasing the compression, or use more time to get better ratios. WMA Lossless is great because, even without any options or settings, it will achieve better compression ratios tha Flac's highest setting and also in about half the time, also the files are easily playable on any PC that has Windows Media Player. If highest compression is what your after, then Monkey's Audio takes the cake.

i have a creative zen extra, should i convert all my music from wavs to lossless wma?

if i do is there any way for me to do a direct batch coversion...

eg if i have folders like this

Music
-Album 1
-- A1 - Track 1
-- A1 - Track 2
-- A1 - Track 3
-Album 2
-- A2 - Track 1
-- A2 - Track 2

If you want to take your lossless files with you, you bought the wrong player. The only lossless formats that you can take on the go are Flac (on the Rio Karma 20 GB) and Apple Lossless (on the iPod, of course).

So, what would I do if I was you? I would use Monkey's Audio to have a lossless archive on my PC, if I wanted one. I use the same file structure that you use, and the way I convert multiple files in many directories is:

Go to the top level of your archive. In your case "Music". In Windows Explorer, right click and use the search feature to find all waves (search for *.wav). Every wave in your archive will show up as a result, and you can just select all and right-click to convert. Make sure that you have output to same folder as original selected. If you're using a lossless codec, also check the "delete source file after completion" box. Then, you wait.

For the Zen, I'd use Windows Media Audio 2-pass VBR or Lame. There's some listening tests that you can find that suggest that Lame is as good as or better than WMA 2-pass VBR, but I myself have not hear that to be the case, and Ogg Vorbis beats them both hands down (that's why I bought a Karma, which also happens to play Flac) but your player doesn't support Ogg. dMC makes it really easy to do your own listening tests, so pick your format (MP3 or WMA), and find the bitrate that you're comfortable with.