Digital Home Thoughts: My Experience with WMA Lossless and the Implications Thereof

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Monday, June 5, 2006

My Experience with WMA Lossless and the Implications Thereof

Posted by Damion Chaplin in "ARTICLE" @ 12:30 PM


The Results


As I said, I was shocked, but not wholly surprised at the results of my tests. My experiment revealed that a 60-minute CD translated into 413MB worth of Lossless WMA files! To put that into perspective, the uncompressed .WAV files took up 614MB, whereas the MP3 files came out at 111MB. So the Lossless WMA files were almost four times the size of high-bitrate MP3s, and saved just a third of the file size over not compressing them at all. Hmm. Here’s that info put succinctly:

File Type:......................Size:........Time to Rip:
Uncompressed .WAV......614MB.......~10 minutes
Lossless WMA................413MB.......11:34
256 kBit/s CBR MP3.......111MB.......12:34

I now had definitive file size data to work with, and it was telling. What about the sound quality though? That’s what I’m really striving for here, otherwise why bother changing what I’m doing at all? So I closed up my office and cranked up the speakers to 11 and listened.

I’ve stated that I’m not a true audiophile, but I do love music. I’ve always thought (and preached) that a high-bitrate MP3 was indistinguishable from a CD. Well, I’m here to say I Was Wrong. A 256 kBit/s MP3 is widely considered to be ‘CD-quality’, but I’ll be darned if I didn’t hear a difference between the two. The song I chose is one of my favorites, so I know it well, and it’s full of many rich independent sounds, so I figured it would be a good test. I skipped to a climactic point where I knew the band went all-out. I listened carefully to each type of file, back and forth. It was hard to tell, because I was listening to it much more intently and at a higher volume than I’d ever had before, but I can tell you for sure that at least one sound that I had always figured was noise (this band likes noise) was actually another instrument way in the background! To me this was definitive proof that an MP3, even a high-bitrate one, will throw away sound that might prevent you from properly feeling the full experience. And it proved that ripping CDs into a lossless format might be worthwhile after all.

Once I had done that, I gave the format a more formal shakedown. It loaded into Nero just fine and it burned a copy with no problem. Theoretically, that burned CD should be a 100% exact duplicate of my original. That makes me happier than I expected, for some reason. Although there was no information on it one way or another, I was pretty certain my PMP wouldn’t play the lossless file, but I tried it anyway. Sure enough, I got a corrupted file message. Oh well.

What Does This Mean?
I now knew that WMA Lossless was clearly superior, sound-wise, to the MP3s I’d been ripping and listening to. I also knew that lossless files would take up almost four times the space of the MP3s I’d been listening to, and I knew that ripping a CD into WMA lossless was just as easy, and a tad faster, than what I was currently doing. Take into account that my current MP3 collection is 60GB, and my brain started spinning at the implications. I couldn’t just times 60GB by four and get the size of my collection as WMA lossless because I knew not all of those files were at 256 kBit/s quality. The more accurate estimate would come by multiplying the time factor. When I import my entire MP3 collection as a playlist, WinAmp reports I have just over 31 days of continuous music! Round down to 410MB per hour of music, and you get just over 305GB for 31 days of music.

Now, I keep my music collection on my 500GB NAS, so 305GB is pretty pricey, but not unaffordable to me. It’s not just about the space though. 305GB represents a significant time investment on my part. In fact, at an 11:30 rip-time per 60 minutes of music, that’s over 142 hours (almost 6 days) of straight ripping with no breaks. Heh. Needless to say it would take me considerably longer than that to do it.

In addition, there’s the fact that my new hypothetical lossless collection would not be portable. I would have to convert every file I want to carry on my PMP. Talk about a drag. I’m somewhat used to that though; I already have to convert any videos I want to watch on it.

My Conclusions
So I’ve decided to do it. I’ll take the plunge. From this day forward, I hereby pledge to rip every new CD to WMA Lossless. I do pledge to slowly, one by one, convert all of my current MP3 collection to WMA Lossless by re-ripping every CD I own, starting with the ones we listen to most often. I’ve decided I’ll store my massive new lossless collection on my NAS and store the albums I want to be portable locally on my main machine’s hard drive. I will keep my current MP3s of those albums as I re-rip them, and convert any new ones I want. I used Illustrate’s dBpowerAMP Music Converter, with its WMA codec plugin, to convert my lossless WMAs to MP3s in no time with a simple right-click. For $14USD, its value to me is considerable.

It’s a huge task and a huge commitment, but I think I’m up to it. I only wish I’d done this years ago. Get back to me in 2010 and I’ll let you know how it’s progressing. ;)

Damion Chaplin is a graphic artist and digital media connoisseur who’s secret identity is a mild-mannered internet manager at a hardware store in San Francisco.

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