RE: Future of WMA Pro?

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Dale, thanks. You make some good points, and the lossless option is sounding
tempting. The reasons I haven't gone that way so far are mainly: (a) I have
the original CDs to go back to if I find later that I really notice AAC @175
kbps is not the real deal on a decent setup (assuming I don't toss the
originals, which I doubt I would have the nerve to); and (b) in the future if
I get more into buying music online (which I don't much nowadays), then I
understand most of it is at 128 kbps (or similar) anyway, so why bother
ripping my own CDs anything higher than ~175 kbps AAC... at least my whole
digitial collection will be roughly consistent in its sub-optimal quality.

Thanks for the insights,

Mike



"Dale" wrote:

It sounds like you have found a good balance on file size and quality to fit
your interests. The logic in your reply is clear. Not as much for your
benefit as for the benefit of others who may read this, let me comment on
some of the things you said:

Keep in mind that you shouldn't toss out the actual CD. First off, the
right to use your own ripped CDs is predicated on your ownership of the CD.
When you play your ripped tracks on a high-quality stereo system, you will
easily tell what you're missing.

I ripped about 30% of my library at 128Kbps, most of the rest at 192Kbps,
and some of it at 392Kbps. I am pretty tone deaf (Sonarman was the only
trade I was ineligible for based on my enlistement tests when I went in the
Navy years ago - oh yeah... and the Navy choir and band) but I can easily
tell the difference between the original CD and either of the 128Kbps or the
192Kbps. I have only recently begun re-ripping the entire library lossless.
If only I'd listened to John Lockwood years ago :)

And the physical CD makes a great backup in case something ever happens to
the stored copy on the PC. And storage is getting cheaper. A single 500GB
hard drive would easily hold a thousand average CDs ripped lossless - that's
about 10 cents a CD to have it on your PC instead of having to mess with the
physical CDs or taking the risk of damaging the original CDs.

And, particularly if you were to toss the originals, you'd be stuck with a
copy of a copy for any other translations you ever make with your media.
Copies of copies are a bad thing if you are changing formats or bit rates.

When you sync a lossless WMA to a portable device, Windows Media Player will
reduce the bit rate on the fly so you will still get excellent use out of
your device.

Storage space on devices is getting pretty cheap as well. Just a few years
ago, I was looking at spending a couple hundred dollars for a 512MB MP3
player. Now for a couple hundred dollars, I can get a 30GB player with the
ability to hold several thousand high-quality audio tracks.

Today, you can get solid state 128GB hard drives - no moving parts and ten
per cent of the power consumption of a regular hard drive... and 30 times the
price of a regular hard drive. Five years from now, though, the price will
have fallen and you can store a huge number of high quality tracks on your
MP3 player with a coin-sized lithium battery that will power it for days.
You can store those high-quality tracks, that is, if you have high-quality
tracks.

Dale


"Mike B" wrote:

It's a bit of both, really. I have a vague feeling that I'll be able to rip
my files to a decent enough quality that I can throw out my CDs -- or at
least box them and put them away in the loft. Of course, this pre-supposes
that I have the means to get the audio output from the place where my ripped
tracks are to my hi-fi system... which I don't at present... but maybe in
future. For the time being they're mainly for playing on my cheapo PC
speakers while working at my PC, and for loading direct onto my portable
player (without the hassle of having to convert to another format)... which
at the moment is just a Palm + Coreplayer but in future may be an iPod, or
some other dedicated "mp3" player.

So, I guess I'm looking for a compromise between lots of different
extremes... decent quality files (but not lossless -- too much storage) for
possible playback in future on a decent hi-fi system, and at the same time
files that will play on a portable player without re-conversion (the quality
would be too much, and bigger files than I would need, but at least I
wouldn't have the hassle of reconverting every time).

I suppose the portable preference rules out WMA Pro. I'm leaning towards
AAC (VBR ~175 kbps) and at last I seem to have found a combination of tools
that will rip to AAC and tag in a way that will be understood by WMP 11, my
preferred desktop player.

Cheers,

Mike


"Dale" wrote:

What is it you intend to do with your music once ripped to your hard disk?
Is it for archival purposes to protect your investment in the case of lost or
damaged CDs? Is it for the purpose of using the tracks in a single device or
multiple devices?

See if this helps:

http://dalepreston.com/Blog/index.html#ripdrm

Dale


"Mike B" wrote:

As I understand it, there are still not many portable media players out there
that support WMA Pro (leaving aside Win Mob devices running Mobile Media
Player)... are there signs of this changing? According to wikipedia, even
Microsoft's own Silverlight doesn't support WMA Pro (not sure whether that
information is up to date).

I'm about to embark on a process of ripping my remaining CDs to disk, and I
don't want to make a betamax choice here. Would it be more sensible to go
with e.g. AAC (which is not directly supported in WMP; I've tried the plugins
and so forth to get AAC support into WMP but they don't play well with the
WMP library)?

Thanks,

Mike

.

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