![]() This may be a concern for you, or it may not. That said, once iTunes has your music, it's a lot harder to do anything with it that doesn't involve Apple. There are also third party tools that offer even greater functionality and flexibility of how to rip and store your music.Īlso, not having an option to error correct CDs like iTunes does is a major fault, in my book. Unless you have an aversion to Apple, or feel strongly that WMA is a superior codec, iTunes offers more choices in ripping files. Also, due to the higher bandwidth, they may not be as easy to stream across a wireless network if that is your preferred method of music distribution within your home.īest Picks: To be honest, for most people there really isn't any compelling reason to use Windows Media Player for ripping your music. There is decent device support for WAV file format, but they do take up the most room on your home servers, PC hard drive or media player's built in storage. Sound quality will be identical to WMA Lossless, though file sizes will be approximately 40 megabytes for a four minute song. WAV (Lossless): This is the basic uncompressed PCM file format for Windows machines. Stepping up to 192 or 256 does result in larger file sizes, but offers a noticeable improvement in sound quality, even over headphones.Ī four minute song will take up a little less than 4 megabytes at 128 kbps, a little more than 5 megabytes at 192 kbps, and about 9 megabytes at 320 kbps. At 128 kbps, sound quality is rather poor, particularly on music with high dynamic range and fine details. There are four options here: 128 kbps (Smallest Size), 192, 256, and 320 kbps (Highest Quality). ![]() Most tests have found that AAC and WMA sound a little better at the same bit rates. It isn't, though, the most efficient codec. ![]() MP3: MPEG 2 Audio Layer 3 has near universal compatibility, and will play on nearly every portable device and digital audio device. ![]() This represents storage savings of up to 50% or possibly more, depending on content, when compared to the original uncompressed CD PCM file format. A four minute song will take up approximately 21 megabytes. Sound quality of either lossless option will be identical to the original CD, as they're both lossless codecs and the underlying file, once extracted, will be identical to the original. Far fewer pieces of equipment support WMA Lossless as compared to Apple Lossless. Windows Media Audio Lossless: Like Apple Lossless, WMA Lossless is Microsoft's lossless codec. A four minute song will take up approximately 3 megabytes when set at the 85 to 145 kbps setting, and 9 megabytes when ripped at the maximum 240 to 355 kbps setting. This allows hard to encode areas of a song to have more bits, and easy to encode areas fewer, resulting in possibly better sound quality with minimal increase in file size. Windows Media Audio (Variable Bit Rate): Like the VBR option in iTunes, WMA (VBR) lets the encoder decide what parts of a song require more or less bits. A four minute song at 64 kbps will take up approximately 2 megabytes, and 5.5 MB at 192 kbps. It is very efficient, so if file size is your concern, and you're a Microsoft fan, this is a good option. One word of caution here, even fewer devices are able to play the WMA Pro audio format than standard WMA files, so you may not be able to play your files on every device going forward. There are bit rate options from 32 to 192, with the default at 64 kbps. Windows Media Audio Pro: This is a more efficient version of the WMA codec, which means that it can offer higher sound quality to WMA at lower bit rates.
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