converting from mp3 to wma

[Connoisseur]

Hey guys, I know there've been topics about this before but none of them specifically answered my question. I have roughly 18 gigs of music ripped to my drives (about 80%-90% of it is 128kbps MP3). I was wondering if converting ALL of my files to WMA would save me a significant amount of space keeping in mind that I don't want any loss in quality. A friend suggested that I just rerip all my cd's to WMA but that would take forever and I really don't have that kind of time. If I ripped from 128kbps MP3 -> 128kbps WMA, how much space would I save and would it sound the same? What about 128->96?

I'm really interested at this point because I just bought a Dell DJ20 and I'm trying to make as much space on it as possible for any future music I might put on it.

 

[Beau]

Recompressing an already compressed (and lossy) audio format will just degrade the quality further.

 

[Connoisseur]

doh. yeah that's what i kinda figured. I was hoping that I could simply convert the mp3 to wma and save a little bit of space. obviously I'm no audio expert. Does anybody have any suggestions as far as saving space without sacrificing quality? errr... without having to re rip everything?

 

[screw3d]

Originally posted by: Connoisseur
doh. yeah that's what i kinda figured. I was hoping that I could simply convert the mp3 to wma and save a little bit of space. obviously I'm no audio expert. Does anybody have any suggestions as far as saving space without sacrificing quality? errr... without having to re rip everything?

I think your best option is to reencode everything. WAV->MP3->WMA = bad.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: Connoisseur
doh. yeah that's what i kinda figured. I was hoping that I could simply convert the mp3 to wma and save a little bit of space. obviously I'm no audio expert. Does anybody have any suggestions as far as saving space without sacrificing quality? errr... without having to re rip everything?

yeah...going lossy to lossy is a no no. And if you are looking for quality in small file size, try OGG

 

[kamper]

Can someone explain this to me? kbps means amount of storage per unit time. Given that he could rerip to wma at the same bit rate and that the songs would be the same length, wouldn't he end up with the same size files, just better quality?

Of course you're not going to get anywhere good working from 128kbps mp3s, that's almost as bad as it gets. I don't understand why anybody would rip to that combo of format/bit rate in the first place. I'm sure nobody cares, but I use strictly 320kbps aac.

What you could do, Connoisseur, is put the music that you have currently on the device and start reripping your albums slowly, whenever you do have time. Slowly replace the mp3s with the wmas until you're done. You did say this was for future space considerations so it sounds like you don't need it all done right now. Size issues aside, at least you'll get slightly better quality.

 

[Connoisseur]

heh, well I figured 128kbps wasn't too different from the cd at least to my ears. That and encoding at 320kbps still has monstrously large files. I don't have THAT much space available.

 

[kamper]

1 hour of my music takes 140MB more or less. On my 20g iPod (say 18.5 gigs of useable space) that gives me ~130 albums. That's as much as I'll need for longer that I'll probably have the thing. Even if I do have it longer, with that much music I don't see a problem in taking off the albums that I'm not currently listening to to make some space. Not only that, but listening to my iPod with my good headphones is often the closest I listen, hence when I need the best quality and really notice the imperfections. Personally, I'd trade the space for the quality any day.

Do you need more than that at a time?

 

[Connoisseur]

lol probably not. But i'm always worried that i'll have a sudden itch for certain music which I haven't heard in a while. which happens pretty frequently. That's why I just want to have everything in there