WMA, Wave & MP3 Files & ipods & MP3 Players

[EdwardGein]

As I just bought ,a Zeno Nano Plus 512 mp3 player for working out as it sure is small & light would appreciate someone please summerizing what the difference is between the following & clarifying them (If there's a web page that offers a good into to this stuff would appreciate a link):

1. Wave files, WMA files & MP3 files- Specifically do they all produce the same overall sound quality to the human ear or are there noticeable differences that you could tell right away? At what bit rate should you record on to get the best sound quality-64, 96, 128, 192 or more?
If space is not an issue what would you recommend recording at? Do you hear less of a difference on ear buds then speakers for these?

2. IPODS and mp3 players- Are these the same things? Flash players & Non flash players- can you you only flash players for running & working out- they're the only ones that won't skip? Assuming you have a CD collection, what again is the purpose of an IPOD?

3. Do some mp3 players sound different then other mp players.

4. What ear buds would you recommend for sound & comfort? I just bought Sennheiser MX-400 In-Ear Headphones for $10 as I couldn't find any ear buds under $200 that had good recommendations for both comfort & sound & these had the best overall.

[plextor guy]

[QUOTE=EdwardGein]As I just bought ,a Zeno Nano Plus 512 mp3 player for working out as it sure is small & light would appreciate someone please summerizing what the difference is between the following & clarifying them (If there's a web page that offers a good into to this stuff would appreciate a link):

1. Check out wikpedia.com for definitions of the different audio files. In a nutshell, wav files are huge and certainly not a format for a small solid state player. The big three among the compression formats are mp3, wma and aac. I'd stick with mp3 and wma. If you encode in mp3 format at 160 or above or wma at 128 and above, chance are you'll be happy with the results. Experimenting is always good. I usually use winamp pro to encode and have had good results.

2. iPods and mp3 players are the same thing. The iPod has become an iCon and is often used generically by people that aren't consumed with this stuff.

3. I'd say close, too close to call. I have 2nd gen iPod, Carbon, iriver solid state player and have owned a number of others. The differences when listening through earbuds or inexpensive headphones is pretty minimal. Aside from sheer output, I can't tell the difference between any of my players. I haven't tried experimenting with side by side listening however. In terms of specs, Creative players are usually at the top of the heap with very impressive specs. Unless you're listening with a headphone amp and and high end headphones (and perhaps even then), differences in sound quality are probably going to be insignificant.

4. I use only earbuds and buy them with comfort and ergonomics in mind. I use them outdoors a lot and tend to break them regularly. For this reason I haven't bought anything very expensive. The model I like right now (on my third pair) is the Sony MDR-E829V. I like this one in large part because it has an inline volume control. No digging around to adjust the volume. They're only about 15 bucks. They sound much better than the meager price might imply.

Lastly, if you haven't checked out podcasting yet, go to podcastalley.com and check out some of the content. You can download or subscribe with iTunes (free), ipodder (free) or ipodderx (not free but it has lots of bells and whistles). Much of the content is swill but there's a lot of worthwhile content too (virtually all of it free). Check out TWIT, diggnation, reel reviews and cinecast to name four. Mostly in mp3 format. Enjoyable to listen to when working out. Enjoy.

[EdwardGein]

Thanks again for all your help. Because of you, I wound up today buying at Circuit City a 512 Zen Nano Plus MP3 player and I'm quite happy with it. I first was going to get one of the Rio ones you mentioned but surfing about them and other players, I came to the conclusion that this sounds like the best bet for me now as I'm only going to use it for jogging and working out. The earbuds that came with as they say in the reviews I read (and in most other mp3 players too) suck as they are totally uncomofrtable and I've order Sennheiser MX-400 ear buds because people said how comfortable they were. If I'm not happy with those, I'll check out your Sony ones.

I'm still a bit unclear about the following and would appreciate any info on this from you or anyone else. For the best sound quality, wave is preferable to wma & mp3 right? If so, as I'm not planning to store more than a few albums at a time & will probably regularly erase them, as this is for 25 minute jogs & workouts anyway, I'll use those. Is there much difference between mp3 and wma? As far as the encoding, will I get a better sound if I record a wma at 300 instead of 128 or is the difference negligible? Same with 300 on an mp3 instead of 160.

Anyway, thanks for your help. I had hoped to get my player cheap online at Ebay or something, but these cretins and the idiots who bid, are selling them for close to what I can buy them at Circuit City for. Mine cost me $129 with tax but it's worth it as its so small and light.

[N. Abstentia]

Yes .wav is by far the best for sound quality since it's uncompressed but with only a 512 you probably wouldn't even be able to fit maybe 10 songs. If you're using earbuds, sound quality should not be a concern though. The extra sound quality just won't come through on them.

[EdwardGein]

Yes .wav is by far the best for sound quality since it's uncompressed but with only a 512 you probably wouldn't even be able to fit maybe 10 songs. If you're using earbuds, sound quality should not be a concern though. The extra sound quality just won't come through on them.

Oh well, maybe I should have bought one with more gigs. I thought this would hold at least 5 wave file albums. My soul purpose of getting this is its easier to carry with me jogging and working out than a portable CD player. So far the ear buds I've tried are really uncomfortable.

[noddin0ff]

My rough estimate is that for uncompressed formats you get about 1 minute music for 10MB. Thus, approximately 50 minutes on a 512MB flash player.

At a moderately high compression rate (~192kbps for example) you get ROUGHLY 5-8 fold compression which would mean ROUGHLY 5-8minutes per 10MB. Or 250-400minutes on a 512MB drive.

Personally, using earbuds in a quite room, I notice the degradation at 128kbps and not really at 192.

[EdwardGein]

Thanks I reread the instructions today & this does wma & mp3 files not wave files, which I thought it did because you can record it straight from your cd player instead of a computer. I'm still a little unclear if wma produces better quality than mp3 or are they basically the same?



My rough estimate is that for uncompressed formats you get about 1 minute music for 10MB. Thus, approximately 50 minutes on a 512MB flash player.

At a moderately high compression rate (~192kbps for example) you get ROUGHLY 5-8 fold compression which would mean ROUGHLY 5-8minutes per 10MB. Or 250-400minutes on a 512MB drive.

Personally, using earbuds in a quite room, I notice the degradation at 128kbps and not really at 192.

[noddin0ff]

Shouldn't be much of an audio difference. I believe that the codec used for wma allows for copy protection, whereas generic mp3 is more open. However they both do essentially the same thing. You can probably Google up some very techy arguments for which is better. If you were going to listen to a compressed file on different players/sytems (say you wanted to burn a mixed CD to play in your car...) MP3 is the more universally accepted format. A CD full of MP3's could give you ~700MB of music...if the player reads MP3 CDs. If you're doing this with a lot of music, its not a bad idea to settle on a format from the start. That way you don't spend hours (or days...) re-ripping your tunes.

[plextor guy]

Thanks I reread the instructions today & this does wma & mp3 files not wave files, which I thought it did because you can record it straight from your cd player instead of a computer. I'm still a little unclear if wma produces better quality than mp3 or are they basically the same?

A wma file will probably sound a little better when compared to an mp3 file if both are encoded at the same bit rate. How much better is a topic for debate. If you want to squeeze as many songs as possible into your player, you can encode in wma at 64-128 and probably find the sound quality acceptable. Personally I'd stick with mp3 simply because it's the defacto standard.