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| Thread ID: 25900 | 2002-10-14 19:07:00 | How To Compress WAV files | willbry (1555) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 89181 | 2002-10-14 19:07:00 | Friends from time to time lend me CDs from which to record various tracks onto my PC to listen to while working. The trouble is each of these takes about 25 MB of space on my hard drive. Is there any way I can compress these wav files so as not to lose too much audio quality but also regain a fair bit of valuable disk space? I haven't got that many so don't want to spend money on a programme to do this. Is there any free software that will allow me to compress these or can winzip ,which I have, do the job? Thanks for any suggestions. Willbry |
willbry (1555) | ||
| 89182 | 2002-10-14 19:18:00 | Don't take this the wrong way, but where have you been for the last 5 years.!!! Yes you can compress your wav's its called MP3 so all you have to look for is a wav to MP3 converter, and im sure there are many free ones out there. A quick searh on http://www.download.com and i found this link here (download.com.com) Note: this prog has spyware, if you don't want spyware just type "wav to mp3" in the search box, or "mp3 encoding" hope this helps p.s. Mp3's will compress your wav's at about a ration of 12:1 depending on which compression you choose. There are many MP3 applications out there. Many will let you at the click of a button record your CD to MP3 If all this sounds too difficult load up your windows media player. Stick in your CD and have a play around, you will see that you can copy your cd to your hard-drive using Microsofts WMA format, which is even smaller than MP3 but not as popular. |
roofus (483) | ||
| 89183 | 2002-10-14 21:31:00 | There are plenty of WAV to MP3 converters. I use dbpoweramp Music Converter (DMC) at dbpoweramp (http://www.dbpoweramp.com). There are other formats than MP3 aswell all with different levels of compression and quality. There is plenty of info on that site to explain the differences. There are also plenty of programs out there to do the conversions. Take your pick. (Just search using Google (http://www.google.com)) G P |
Graham Petrie (449) | ||
| 89184 | 2002-10-14 22:20:00 | prefer cdex or EAC myself http://www.cdex.n3.net/ |
tweak'e (174) | ||
| 89185 | 2002-10-14 22:28:00 | i forgot to add. most codecs used (mp3,ogg,wma etc) are lossy. ie they lose data. its a trade off. file size vers quality. i don't recommend WMA. OGG is good, free,open source.(suggest quality setting of 5) mp3 actually has many different codecs. lame is one of the more comman free ones. there are a few settings which effect file size and quality. i would suggest if you what good quality use 160k VBR or higher.(the higher you go the better but the file size gets bigger) |
tweak'e (174) | ||
| 89186 | 2002-10-14 22:37:00 | tweake'e, I like dbpoweramp because it is insanely fast comapred to the others, and very simple (clean interface). But everyone has their own favourite, and arguing their merits is worhtless. I would like to add that if you want lossless compression (ie not sound quality lost) you can use Monkey's Audio codec. The problems are that you need a player to support it (dbpoweramp :)), more space as the compression is about half that of MP3's (but still a quarter the size of a WAV), and they are less popular, so compatibility is an issue. G P |
Graham Petrie (449) | ||
| 89187 | 2002-10-14 22:51:00 | <flame time>.......nah just kidding ;-) to get the waves on to the hardrive he will need a cd ripping program (which begs the question "how did he get the waves onto the hardrive in the first place?"). dbpoweramp will do it (not sure if you need the power pack to do it) but its noway near as good as cdex or EAC. tho its converting is nice and simple. lossless codec might be a little pointless if its being played through standard pc speakers(fantastic if you want perfect quality). good old winamp has monkeys plugin. now stand back for the flames from the musicmatch crowd.........hehehehe ;-) there are heaps of choices out there. go explore, have fun! one litle tip- you will proberly see somewhere that 128kb/s is "CD quality". load of BS. 128 is bearable but fairly poor quality. |
tweak'e (174) | ||
| 89188 | 2002-10-14 23:31:00 | > but its noway near as good > as cdex or EAC. In what ways? - I am always open to try new software if it is genuinely better, and not just a personalpreference thing. BTW, IMHO this is not a hijack as the original question has been answered :) G P |
Graham Petrie (449) | ||
| 89189 | 2002-10-15 02:02:00 | just went back and fired up my copy of dbpowerapp. its pretty basic. eac and cdex have more optoins for the actual ripping side of things which is handy for those damaged/tricky cd's. i use cdex in paranoid mode. biggest fault was no id tag for OGG. :_| (mayby a bug due to fixed????) |
tweak'e (174) | ||
| 89190 | 2002-10-15 04:24:00 | Graham, tweake is correct in his comments. We have had many threads in regards to encoding, decoding, of lossy formats. try here (pressf1.co.nz) for example. Basically Tweake and loshing are the experts on this stuff, and i'ld like to think i'm not far behind. Some codec's can be fast, but it results in poor quality above a certain sound level. As for programmes, yes this is a different story, but remember a programme can only be as good as the codec it uses. |
roofus (483) | ||
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