Saving to WMA Lossless issue

[Ringmaster]

Thanks Guys,

It looks like we are all on the same track. Now that plenty of storage is available, I am keeping all of my files in the .wav format. Also, I do not transmit Media files over the Internet.

[Audyossey]

...The .wma format for me, scares me a bit, because I read some reports that in the future that M$oft is thinking about charging for the use of the codec that will be necessary to create or play .wma files...

Somehow I doubt that it could get away from it anymore. Microsoft used to be able to force the industry to adopt its standards just by making them Windows standards. But after screwing over Netscape with a "proprietary" (that is, a slightly different) standard, knifing Apple in the back with a "strategic partnership" that let them "develop" their own proprietary version of QuickTime, another con game on Adobe, and so on, the industry finally rallied. Nowadays proprietary Microsoft standards are generally ignored in favor of open industry standards. I don't see Microsoft being able to charge for this kind of ordinary, copycat "technology" anymore.

HB

Is .wma truly lossless?

It seems like I read somewhere that .wma is not truly "Lossless". I would prefer to keep all of my audio files as .wav. For some reason, I feel rebelus, when I feel I am being "pushed" into using the Windows Media Format.

Dumb question: What are "Tags"?

I did some testing awhile back on all the various lossless formats..wma, .ape, .flac and so on. I found that .wma does have a method for lossless compression. There are many flavors of .wma though. Just because a file has the .wma extension, doesn't mean that it is a lossless file.
The .wma format for me, scares me a bit, because I read some reports that in the future that M$oft is thinking about charging for the use of the codec that will be necessary to create or play .wma files. This may happen to all files in the future, but it just makes me a bit hesitant using the format.

Tags became all the rage when MP3 became popular. Many of the popular audio file formats have a method of storing information about the file in these "Tags". Information such as song title, artist, track number as well as cd cover art are common uses for this tag information.

Hope this helps a bit....

GB

[Ringmaster]

.wma

Is .wma truly lossless?

It seems like I read somewhere that .wma is not truly "Lossless". I would prefer to keep all of my audio files as .wav. For some reason, I feel rebelus, when I feel I am being "pushed" into using the Windows Media Format.

Dumb question: What are "Tags"?

[Craig Maier]

Saving to wma lossless fixed in v7.09

The problem with saving to wma lossless has been fixed in v7.09. That will be available to everyone shortly.

[Ringmaster]

Database

Thanks Guys,

I use Excel for cataloging the CD's that I make. My numbering system is CDR-00001 through CDR-10000. This really works well for finding "Album Title"; "Artist" & "Genre"; I also use the "Pivot Table" to list the "Names" & "Numbers of Copies" that I've given/loaned to people. I also have separate catlogs of my "LP's", 45's & 78's (I doubt if I ever get these completed!).

Right now I'm deciding if I want to use the "DC Tune Library", or "Data Base 2000" for my Media Library. Both of these programs will do what I need. The "DataBase 2000" is very extensive and exceptionally good for tracking Classical Data, including "Composer", "Symphony/Movement", "Conductor", "Orchestra", "Track Length", "Year of Composition, etc.; but I don't know if it will do Song Leveling of my Play Lists.

I used another database for my original Library; it was excellent. It did "Song Leveling" for all of my "Play Lists" that I created; however it did not let me assign my own "Genre", that was familiar to me. It was more oriented to "Disk Jockey" Genre, many of which I know nothing about. It did not lend itself to cataloging the type of Genre that we need for cataloging our type of restorations.

Since I own the DB2000 software, I may go that route because I can delete all of the colums that I do not need. However, if it will not do "Song Leveling" of my playlists, I will use the DC Tune Library, but first I have to figure out how to do "Batch Processing" for automatic "Song Leveling", and the maximum number of tracks that I can use for my Song Lists. My Song Lists are pretty extensive, because I use my "Genre" assignment for Out-door entertainment, Holidays, Weddings, etc.

I went into a little more detail than I had planned to do; but, I thought it might be helpful to other members that might not of thought of the different methods and functionality of creating "Catalogs" and "Play Lists". When the "Sound Leveling" is applied to my "Play Lists", I don't need to keep running into the house to change the volume for tracks that are lower or higher in volume. It is all done automatically!

I use Excel, but my database needs are not too great. I mainly just want to know what I have and where it's located in the house (hard copy) and which hard drive the music (ripped or restored copy) is located on.

I don't go searching trying to find specific songs or words or titles, so almost anything would work for my situation.

GB

[Brian]

This might be a dumb question; but, could "Excel" be used for an Audio Database?

If by "database" you mean a type of catalog of your .wav files, restored songs, ripped CDs, etc. then the answer is a qualified yes. Qualified because it isn't what it is really designed to do (but, having said that, it is a very common use of Excel) - and secondly because a far simpler and more elegant solution is to use the DC Tunes Library (under the "files" drop-down menu) database already built in to your copy of DC7. You would have to spend weeks writing macros to get Excel to do half of what DC Tunes is already set up to do.

If by "database" you mean actually storing the data that makes up a .wav or .mp3 file, the answer is a no.

Brian

[Ringmaster]

This might be a dumb question; but, could "Excel" be used for an Audio Database?

GB -

There is a saying common in the engineering world that sums up the situation nicely and it is:

"Standard is Better than Better"

Craig

How true!!!

GB

[Craig Maier]

GB -

There is a saying common in the engineering world that sums up the situation nicely and it is:

"Standard is Better than Better"

Craig

Why risk compatabiltiy problems down the line so that you can save 50% in storage space now? Most of the real cost is in the effort to produce these things and not the cost of data storage.

---

How would you feel 5 years from now if you could not find a system that could decode your lossless compression scheme of your precious collection? I would really feel quite terrible about it. My archive is simply in .wav on a 1 TByte drive with two back-ups of the same. I sleep nicely at night because of that combination.

I recently had a scare that really highlights these thoughts. I've been slowly converting all of my old .flac files into uncompressed wav and ran into a problem file the other day. I tried 3 different decoders and the the file wouldn't convert properly back to it's native .wav; even the "official" FLAC decoder wouldn't touch the file. Finally, in desperation I tried an old version of Winamp to decode the file...... Luckily for me it worked, but it could have easily not have. This was a lesson for me to stay away from any compression scheme for long term storage.

GB

[Craig Maier]

That would be great - - - send it to:

craig@diamondcut.com

Thanks

[Jimcco]

Craig,
I made a small (18k) spreadsheet file that looks like my J River Library. I could email it for you to look at. It demonstrates the complexities of Classical libraries.
Jim

[Craig Maier]

Wow! That sure is a lot of fields. I just embed the data that you mention into the existing fields and the search engine finds what I am looking for. But, we can look at this in the future; sure makes the hierarchy structure complicated though.