Need help New to MP3 (Sony NW owner)

[Briant73]

I just got my first MP3 (Sony) player and have a few questions. I have started reading through the FAQ and message on this forum but figure it's best to ask.

1) What video converter should I use? The FAQ has a psp one but is their a better one?

2) What audio format is best for sound quality? I plan on using WMP11 and have more than a few cd's to rip.

Thanks

[CrowdAds]

[emfa]

1) http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum...ideo+converter - read here and if they dont work then post the same question there

2) i better not answer this one (it created a polemic last time I answered)

[Skinjob]

If you're going to go to the trouble to rip a bunch of CDs you definitely want to use a lossless format. Once you've got them in lossless you can always transcode to a lossy format for portable use. If you only have lossy files, then transcoding to another lossy format will cause significant loss of quality.

I think most people tend to use FLAC because it's open and widely supported. There is no sound quality difference between the lossless formats (or they wouldn't be lossless). So if you have some reason to prefer WMA Lossless, APE or whatever, it's fine. You can always transcode to another lossless format later on without problem.

I recently ripped about 2000 CDs to FLAC files. I use Winamp's really nice portables feature to automatically transcode and sync to portable devices. I would strongly suggest checking out Winamp unless there's some reason you have to use WMP.

The best place to learn about all the technical details of ripping, tools, codecs, etc. is hydrogenaudio.org.

[Wings]

I use WinAVI MP4 Converter.

http://www.download.com/WinAVI-3GP-M...-10482162.html

[Briant73]

To everyone thanks for responding.

Being brand new to the portable audio world, I'm learning as I go and have more questions. So let's say I want to take a store bought CD and rip it and put the songs on my new Sony NWZ-A818blk. What would you consider the best format for that? If you don't want to start a major debate just PM me.

[Almoxil]

Convert them to MP3 using EAC + LAME. Great combo, and freeware . There are some guides on how to configure them to get maximum sound quality and reasonable file sizes here and here.

There's also a nice tutorial about EAC + LAME here. Thanks, dfkt!

[Wings]

Originally Posted by Briant73

So let's say I want to take a store bought CD and rip it and put the songs on my new Sony NWZ-A818blk. What would you consider the best format for that?

Just use WMP to rip them. Rip in mpe format. And if you want to get the most amount of music on your player rip at 128k. WMP will auto create a folder in your music folder and add the title tracks, artist info and album art.

[Briant73]

Thanks for the answers so far, so it sounds like I shouldn't use WMA or WMA vbr?

I know a lot of this is trial and error but what bitrate setting do most of you use? I definetely want great sound quality but if say picking bitrate B over A gives me close to the same quality at a 10% or more file space reduction that would be a factor. As for compability, this is mainly for me and my player.

[sassafras]

mp3 is just more supported and LAME sounds as good as any WMA implementation. Use EAC to rip your CD's if you care about getting them off the CD exactly as they went on. If you just want to listen to the music without the slight added hassle that better quality gives you, just do what the Wings suggests and use WMP to rip.

I would second Almoxil though, EAC + LAME is the best combination, bar none. Use the Preset: Standard or Preset: fast standard for LAME compression. That will give you near transparent audio (You can't tell the difference between that and mp3) and it will be around 190 kbps which is totally acceptable for size.

[Briant73]

Ok got EAC and LAME, converted a cd to mp3 and now am wondering what's the best way to get everything over to the mp3 player. I like how windows media player inserts the albums artwork and such. Could I convert the CDS to mp3 with eac/lame then just push them over to the mp3 player using windows media player sync?

[Almoxil]

Yes, WMP11 should work fine for that. Other options are MediaMonkey (I use this to sync to my brothers NW-S616) and Winamp. Nice choice: EAC + LAME, when properly configured, give the best SQ.

[Briant73]

So using EAC/Lame I got songs ripped with VBR new 2 that seemed to work very well. These songs were just a tad bigger than WMP11 fixed rate of 192, but were much smaller than 256(28-33% savings) and 320(51-58%). WMA VBR was bigger on it's top two settings also.

So far pretty happy with this suggested combination thanks everyone! What settings do you all use with eac/lame?

[Ascariss]

It doesn't matter what audio codec or quality you use, it matters what you like using or have been using.

wmp11 supports mp3 and wma, so you can use either one, i've been using mp3 @ 320 and battery life hasn't been affected at all, getting on average 28 hours for play time.

[TrackSol]

Rip at the lowest bitrate that sounds good enough to you. It's all about compromises and how picky you really are.

Everyone's ears are different. Add to that that all players are different and also that the sound changes using different headphones. So yeah, it's quite complex.

It also depends on what you are going to pay the music through. Some people rip in lossless to the computer and play their music through Hi-Fi home stereos. Of course, the walkman doesn't support this format so it's a moot point. However, some people are obsessive compulsive and want the stuff on their computer to be the best audio quality possible. You could then re-encode it to a lower bitrate for transfer to your walkman.

1. Find a set of headphones that you like and are comfortable.

2. Test the same song in different bitrates with your player to see where you start noticing sound quality being degraded. Use the next bitrate higher.

For me, I encode all my new rips in MP3 192. All my old mp3's are in 128. I haven't noticed a big difference to MY ears with anything above 192.

[sassafras]

Have you considered VBR encoding? You can encode mp3 VBR at around 192 kbps using the -V2 --vbr-new switch and get quality transparent to CD. Something even 192 cbr can't do.

[Elton Noway]

Originally Posted by Briant73

I just got my first MP3 (Sony) player and have a few questions. I have started reading through the FAQ and message on this forum but figure it's best to ask.

1) What video converter should I use? The FAQ has a psp one but is their a better one?

2) What audio format is best for sound quality? I plan on using WMP11 and have more than a few cd's to rip.

Thanks

While most audiophiles won't recommend the Mp3 format but I have no problem with it. I just want the music to sound good to me. I rip all my CD's to MP3 format at 192Kbps (and a few at 256 Kbps) although there are plenty of arguments whether a human can detect the sound quality improvement above 192 Kbps when listening on a DAP. WMP lets you select the audio quality under Rip Options.

On the Video converter I think TacticalPenguin said it best when he said : Super C is really nice: Install it, run it, drag your videos in, and hit convert. Done.

Unfortunately I can't find the original thread where someone laid out all the step by step instructions so I can't give the author credit. The good news is I copied them to a word document so I'll just paste them here. I've tried a bunch of converters and SuperC has been the easiest to use and has worked everytime. Here are the steps in using it with your Sony. Thanks to whoever put this together.

Note: The Latest version of super C can be downloaded at:
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
_______________________________________________

Once downloaded and installed...

Make sure the settings are as follows:

1. Output Container: mp4
2. Output Video Codec: H.264/AVC
3. Output Audio Codec: AAC

Video Settings:
Video Scale Size: 320:240
Aspect: 4:3
Frame/Sec: 30
Bitrate kbps: 768 Audio Settings:
Sampling Freq: 44100
Channels: 2
Bitrate kbps: 56
AudioStream: default

You’ll see these settings summarized and listed in the red Output box. Last... to transfer video files to your Walkman, simply move or drag and drop the files to the identified area in the SuperC window.

The default location for the converted files are saved to is: C:\Program Files\eRightSoft\Super\Output, but you can change the save location by right-clicking anywhere on the Super (C) dialog box, select Output File Saving Management, specify the folder of your choice, then click Save Changes.

Last... transfer the converted files to the Video folder on your walkman wither via moving or by dragging and dropping.

Piece a Cake!
_______________________________________________

[mp3newbie]

1st MP3..sony S616..using WMP11...so far, so good except...lots of tracks, I had to enter the information manually...genre & release year appears in WMP & in the walkman listing in WMP when connected but when disconnected the songs list release year as unknown...Sony online help was over my head...please does any have an easy, "walk-me-through" suggestion?

[CDMP3PlayerFan]

Originally Posted by mp3newbie

1st MP3..sony S616..using WMP11...so far, so good except...lots of tracks, I had to enter the information manually...genre & release year appears in WMP & in the walkman listing in WMP when connected but when disconnected the songs list release year as unknown...Sony online help was over my head...please does any have an easy, "walk-me-through" suggestion?

One possible cause of the "Unknown" year problem is if you loading the music files via drag-and-drop (putting the files on your player via Windows Explorer). My experience has been that this problem doesn't occur if you use Windows Media Player to sync the files to your player.

If all of the music in Windows Media Player will fit on the player the procedure is fairly simple:

- Start Windows Media Player
- Connect your player. If this is the first time you've done this it will ask you to name your player.
- Click on the "Sync" button. A Sync panel will appear on the right side of the screen.
- Drag the files you want on your player to that panel.
- Click on the "Start Sync" button at the bottom of the panel. It will take some time if you are putting a large amount of music on your player.

There are other, more complicated, methods to sync the music to your player but the above is the simplest when using Windows Media Player.