Hi all, if you're wondering what music format to use for your pda, you might find this useful. Hopefully this might answer some questions you have.
First off, I'm going to tell you what I use and why. Some of you more experienced Audiophile'rs will probably disagree with some of my findings but that is ok, you are entitled to your opinions. But please don't forget, for the normal joe out there that don't have Audiophile ears this is a good alternative. By the way - Audiophilers are people that are very sensitive, keen or atuned to sound and music, they often can hear differences in music/sound that most people cannot hear. I also possess some of the attributes of an Audiophile, I can hear very high frequencies or electronic signals that most people can't hear.
Ok. When I first bought my pda, I was excited to know that it will be taking over my rinky dinky Rio 32 MB MP3 player :). With a big CF card the possibilites are endless when it comes to MP3 music. Well, that fell short because MP3's add up after awhile in file size and before I knew it, my 128 mb CF card was full. It's like money, the more you have, the more you will spend. The alternative? buy a bigger memory card, well, I'm not made of money, so I started looking for other solutions.
I noticed that WMP in my PocketPC will also play .wma (Windows Media Audio). I wanted to find out what this format was all about and after a couple of days of researching I found that you can convert an MP3 file to a .WMA file to half the size without much quality loss (to my ears anyways). There are several free conversion utils out on the net you can download, I will list the one I use below. THIS IS GREAT NEWS! I can now convert all my MP3's to WMA's and fit twice as much on a 128 MB CF card. Audiophilers are probably saying, "euww, wma" well, guys/gals, to my ears there really isn't much difference, remember we came from a cassette Walkman era, this is still 10 x better :). IMHO, I find that the WMA at a higer bitrate is very close to an MP3. I think once you get to 64kbps bitrate you can start to hear some hollowness to the song, I find that 96 kbps is best.
Last week, I was roaming around the forums and saw some postings on this other format.. OGG. So, I had to find out what it was all about. To my surprise, the OGG is very much like the .wma format except to my findings the compression for OGG is a bit better. I've done some comparisons and the wma format converted using 96kbps bitrate is equivalent to the 64kbps bitrate in the OGG format, so in another words, the compression is better on the OGG and as far as I can hear, the quality is better too. This excellent news, now I can compress the file smaller and retain same quality format.
So, in conclusion, the OGG format is better in compression and quality compared to the .WMA format but of course not as good as the raw MP3 format. This is a given when you compress anything at that rate you will no doubt sacrifice some quality. Playing OGG, WMA files on my Dell through the external speakers is a bit rough but that's just the cheap speakers most pda uses, but when you listening through the strereo headphones with a half decent hearphone, it's very good in either format.
My point? well, for all of you that cannot afford buying larger memory cards and want to utilize what you have, I think that using either wma or ogg format is a good solution.
Software to use for OGG/WMA:
1. I use dbPowerAmp Converter to convert all my OGG or WMA files. It's a great app and it's free. Plus it's supported with a ton of third party Codecs for conversion. Make sure when you use this app that you install the Windows Media Audio Codec and the Ogg Vorbis Codec.
2. To play Ogg files on your PocketPC, you'll need WinAmPAQ .92, it's a WinAMP clone for the PocketPC. This app is also freeware.
3. For .WMA files you just use the Windows Media Player that came with your PocketPC. You can also use the dbPowerAMP converter to convert wma files.
Well, this is brief but to the point, I hope this helps many of you, I know I didn't really get into details with format bitrates but I think it would probably confuse more new users then help :). The best thing to do is to convert some files into OGG, WMA and MP3 and play them on your PocketPC and you can judge for youself which format suits you best.
Good Information and I appreaciate your sharing it. I am a big beliver in not reinventing the wheel and in not working hard to solve an issue that soemone else has more expertise in it.
Hey Mini, great information. One question I have, maybe it was answered and I missed it. My wife has a ton of MP3's on our home computer. Will those files still be in the MP3 format when I convert? What exactly will I need? I sync all my outlook, inbox, task, ect at work (my my cradle stays, I do have extra sync cable and A/C adapter), how do I transfer without messing up my wife's files? I don't want to be in the doghouse, if you get my drift. This is the best site on the web,I hope someone puts a book about, "What you can do with your Dell Axim". One cannot depend on Dell for this. Thanks fot the info, it was greatly appreciated. I ordered a Lexar 256mb SD card for MP3's, now I just need to know how to do this. I am not exactly a "teekie". Hell, just for me to even purchase my 400, was a big step in eliminating my Franklin Planner. Thanks, Paul C.
So, in conclusion, the OGG format is better in compression and quality compared to the .WMA format but of course not as good as the raw MP3 format. This is a given when you compress anything at that rate you will no doubt sacrifice some quality. Playing OGG, WMA files on my Dell through the external speakers is a bit rough but that's just the cheap speakers most pda uses, but when you listening through the strereo headphones with a half decent hearphone, it's very good in either format.
You don't to have extraordinairy hearing to be an audiophile, my ears aren't that great but I hate bitrates <192... it totally depends what quality decoder/amp/cables/speakers you use if you are going to hear the difference between diiferent bitrates. For Axim use I find 128Kbps acceptable because the Philips earplugs just aren't up to the task of high-quality sound. For at home of in my car I prefer 224Kpbs or higher.
Nice piece of text but I disagree at some points, first of all MP3 is already a compressed format. Recompressing the MP3s to another format/bitrate the quality will get worse, if you want another format/bitrate use the original medium to create it for the best quality.
OGG gives better sound quality than WMA and MP3 at bitrates <128Kbps.
Originally posted by pcamaren Hey Mini, great information. One question I have, maybe it was answered and I missed it. My wife has a ton of MP3's on our home computer. Will those files still be in the MP3 format when I convert? What exactly will I need? I sync all my outlook, inbox, task, ect at work (my my cradle stays, I do have extra sync cable and A/C adapter), how do I transfer without messing up my wife's files? I don't want to be in the doghouse, if you get my drift. This is the best site on the web,I hope someone puts a book about, "What you can do with your Dell Axim". One cannot depend on Dell for this. Thanks fot the info, it was greatly appreciated. I ordered a Lexar 256mb SD card for MP3's, now I just need to know how to do this. I am not exactly a "teekie". Hell, just for me to even purchase my 400, was a big step in eliminating my Franklin Planner. Thanks, Paul C.
No, the mp3's will still be there, you just convert to another directory or existing, it will not overwrite your mp3's cause the new converted format has a dif extension.
everyone hear's different, I encode my music
in WMA at 48 kbs and frankly I think it sounds
just as good as my CD's, which I know this
is not possible, but well they are my ears not
yours... and if anyone told me to try another
bit rate, i would say FORGET it,... for one reason..
why mess with it? .. its small, sounds good (TO ME)
why change it ?
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Originally posted by maarten You don't to have extraordinairy hearing to be an audiophile, my ears aren't that great but I hate bitrates <192... it totally depends what quality decoder/amp/cables/speakers you use if you are going to hear the difference between diiferent bitrates. For Axim use I find 128Kbps acceptable because the Philips earplugs just aren't up to the task of high-quality sound. For at home of in my car I prefer 224Kpbs or higher.
Nice piece of text but I disagree at some points, first of all MP3 is already a compressed format. Recompressing the MP3s to another format/bitrate the quality will get worse, if you want another format/bitrate use the original medium to create it for the best quality.
OGG gives better sound quality than WMA and MP3 at bitrates <128Kbps.
You are absolutely correct, perhaps I should rephrase from Audiophile to "Audiophile/Picky" :)
My point is this maarten, I use my PocketPC to listen to music basically to kill time either in a noisy subway or moutain biking. The kind of quality you're referring to has no presidence in the way I use mine because there are alot of environment noise surrounding me. I apologize, when I mean "raw mp3" I meant untouched or reconverted mp3's. I suspect that many people also use their Pocketpc as a subsitute music source like I do.
If I want to listen to high quality music, I would invest my money on a minidisc or an actual mp3 portable cd player.
I know we tend to get carry away with quality rather then quantity but there are cases where quantity is more important to alot of us rather then quality. And I said before, convert the files to different formats and see which suits the individual the best, I didn't say you "have" to convert the files, my posting is to help those less unfortunates that can't spend the extra dollars to buy more memory. If we can save a little room and utilize the space on our memory cards without sacrificing much quality in the music, why not? Some people can't tell the difference between 128 bitrate and 64 bitrate, why not just use 64 bitrate and cut the size down to half? I'm not encoding my music for anyone else but me so it really doesn't matter does it?
Please don't get my wrong maarten, I would love to have the best quality there is, heck, who wouldn't... but we must sometimes wake up and smell the air pollution and face present reality... :)
Originally posted by pcamaren I,m sorry Mini, that was actually for SilentKnight, because of his monikor (sp) name.
No i wasnt in the military, My name
on a lot of sites used to be "QuietGuy"
but I got older and people started
mocking it.. so I changed it to SilentKnight
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Originally posted by MiniM3 If I want to listen to high quality music, I would invest my money on a minidisc or an actual mp3 portable cd player.
Please don't get my wrong maarten, I would love to have the best quality there is, heck, who wouldn't... but we must sometimes wake up and smell the air pollution and face present reality... :)
Good Luck!
I've listened to my Axim for some hours now I'm not dissapointed by the quality of the souns it produces (forget the speaker ;)) I don't think a mp3 player can do much better (and that's the only thing it can do)
For just killing time while in the sub a lower bitrate is just fine and for some types of sound you can go even lower without losing quality... for speech you can go as low as 48Kbps or even 32Kbps OGG :)
Re: Re: Re: Re: MP3, OGG or WMA? Here's my choice....
Quote:
Originally posted by maarten I've listened to my Axim for some hours now I'm not dissapointed by the quality of the souns it produces (forget the speaker ;)) I don't think a mp3 player can do much better (and that's the only thing it can do)
For just killing time while in the sub a lower bitrate is just fine and for some types of sound you can go even lower without losing quality... for speech you can go as low as 48Kbps or even 32Kbps OGG :)
I just "reload" my 256mb SD every few days
Yeah, no kidding, in the subway might as well hook your headphones up to an 8-Track take player...hahaha :)
Now that I have a Dell, I rip my cd's to WMA 64kps and they sound no different to me with my headphones, laptop speakers or over my "cheesy" car stereo compared to 128kps mp3's. If I want to listen at home, I throw in the real thing (cd's). It's totally about getting the most decent sound in the smallest package for me.
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