Music Encoding/Recoding Settings

[Guest Dr Who]

Has anyone had a look at what the best encoding settings are for playing back music (.wma) files on the C500? Or do you just use the default settings from Windows Media?

[Guest hawkwindz2000]

i find the best way is to use a proggie called mp3 sound cutter..you can get a demo at www.coolsmart.com

pick out the part of the mp3 u want and it will save it as a wav.

start nero burning rom...select extras and run encode files..load the wav u have decided upon and then alter the settings to 22050 ..8 bit mono and save as pcm wav file..then active sync to phone..thats one way around the problem

[Guest Dr Who]

Cheers hawkwindz but I was more talking about ripping .cda files to .wma for playback in Windows Media Player. I ripped a CD earlier at the default 128kbps but haven't had the chance to listen to it yet. I vaguely remember that the E100/200 used to skip if you went above a certain bit rate. Might be wrong though. Also, although playback quality seems good in the short time I have listened to it at what point do you think the 'ceiling' for encoding is? Will a 192kbps ACTUALLY sound any better than a 128kbps played out through the C500 headphones?

[Guest Marko31]

Hi,

Well if it's intended to listen music with your C500 and not ringtones, you should use the Mp3 format with the lame Codec, wich give better sound quality at 128kpbs and higher settings ...

Chuss !

[Guest crafty]

I find that dBpowerAMP is the best utility for ripping/converting music plus it's free :). I tend to rip music at 64kbps WMAs which sounds fine through the supplied headphones nad brings most songs down to 1-2mb.

[Guest Dr Who]

OK, so I listened to the latest Dom and Roland album with my SPV this morning with a 128kbps .wma and here are my impressions.

Firstly impression is that the quality if pretty good. Clarity is there, which is good. However the sound is REALLY bright with LOADS of attack. In fact if you push the volume up it distorts at quite low values. It also totally lacks any bass weight (I know, the headphones and all that, but still). After listening to a few tracks I kinda got the impression that I was listening to a facsimile of the music but not the actual music. There was no joy to it, no love and certainly nothing to make me want to listen to a whole album. Might cope better with different music and would be OK, I guess, for quickly listening to an album. Might also benefit from being output through speakers but I doubt it. Perhaps other audio players cope better, or perhaps a change of coding might breathe life back into it?

I think I will be sticking to my minidisc player for portable audio. I will fill my SD card with choons for when I am without it, which I guess is quite handy.

[Guest Phil Lee]

I received my 256Mb card yesterday and have uploaded a couple of albums to it. I have an iPod so have ripped all my music to mp3 using LAME with the --alt-preset standard option. That basically gives 196kbps VBR mp3 files. The sound was pretty good with them. I didn't have any chopping and they didn't sound overly bright. The limitation was the stereo headphones supplied with the phone. The other problem is that I can only fit 2 or 3 albums worht of music on the phone when encoded at that level but since it is only emergency music for when I don't have access to my iPod that's fine.

[Guest Dr Who]

Need to get the adapter from Expansys so I can use different headphones.......