'Lossless' formats on HTC Desire
Discussion
As the audio in my daily driver is awful, I tend to listen to music on my phone (HTC Desire) but to be honest I'm fed up with the crappy sound qualities of mp3. After ripping an album to wav, copying to the HTC and listening to it on headphones then listening to other mp3s on it, It's like night and day. The wavs are crystal clear and loud, the mp3s sound crunchy, over-compressed and have awful sibilance.
The only problem with loading my SD card with WAVs is the massive file size. I see that the HTC supports aac, amr, ogg, m4a, mid, mp3, wav, and wma lossless. Which of these would be 2nd best to wav in terms of sound quality without taking up the huge amounts of memory that wavs do? Unfortunately, FLAC does not appear to be supported
Thanks
The only problem with loading my SD card with WAVs is the massive file size. I see that the HTC supports aac, amr, ogg, m4a, mid, mp3, wav, and wma lossless. Which of these would be 2nd best to wav in terms of sound quality without taking up the huge amounts of memory that wavs do? Unfortunately, FLAC does not appear to be supported
Thanks
Dunno about .mid but of all the formats you list only wav and wma lossless are, erm, lossless, so to answer your question, wma lossless is the next best alternative.
You could also try higher bitrate mp3 or aac files, depending on what your htc will allow, as it may be your headphones that become the limiting factor at a certain bitrate. You might be able to get a very highly compressed wma lossless file that is not much bigger than a high bitrate .mp3, .aac, etc., again depending on what your htc will decode.
Mike...
You could also try higher bitrate mp3 or aac files, depending on what your htc will allow, as it may be your headphones that become the limiting factor at a certain bitrate. You might be able to get a very highly compressed wma lossless file that is not much bigger than a high bitrate .mp3, .aac, etc., again depending on what your htc will decode.
Mike...
Sounds like you aren't encoding the mp3s properly (or using a rubbish/old encoder?)
Use LAME for MP3, LameDrop makes this a simple drag and drop process. V0 is transparent to me on almost all material. AAC encoded with the Nero encoder is transparent to me at over 200kbps.
I'm not suggesting I have 'golden ears' but I can hear pre-echo, ringing etc more than most people can, and the above set up is more than good enough for me whilst on the move.
Otherwise, as you say, it's WMA or nowt, unless an app like Winamp might be able to play FLAC natively.
ETA: Winamp can't but a few apps claim to play FLAC
Use LAME for MP3, LameDrop makes this a simple drag and drop process. V0 is transparent to me on almost all material. AAC encoded with the Nero encoder is transparent to me at over 200kbps.
I'm not suggesting I have 'golden ears' but I can hear pre-echo, ringing etc more than most people can, and the above set up is more than good enough for me whilst on the move.
Otherwise, as you say, it's WMA or nowt, unless an app like Winamp might be able to play FLAC natively.
ETA: Winamp can't but a few apps claim to play FLAC
budgie smuggler said:
Sounds like you aren't encoding the mp3s properly (or using a rubbish/old encoder?)
Use LAME for MP3, LameDrop makes this a simple drag and drop process. V0 is transparent to me on almost all material. AAC encoded with the Nero encoder is transparent to me at over 200kbps.
I'm not suggesting I have 'golden ears' but I can hear pre-echo, ringing etc more than most people can, and the above set up is more than good enough for me whilst on the move.
Otherwise, as you say, it's WMA or nowt, unless an app like Winamp might be able to play FLAC natively.
ETA: Winamp can't but a few apps claim to play FLAC
This. The encoding rate may be low or the codec pants. Either way I would defy anyone to tell the difference between the original CD and an MP3 over 192Kbps when listend to in a normal situation.Use LAME for MP3, LameDrop makes this a simple drag and drop process. V0 is transparent to me on almost all material. AAC encoded with the Nero encoder is transparent to me at over 200kbps.
I'm not suggesting I have 'golden ears' but I can hear pre-echo, ringing etc more than most people can, and the above set up is more than good enough for me whilst on the move.
Otherwise, as you say, it's WMA or nowt, unless an app like Winamp might be able to play FLAC natively.
ETA: Winamp can't but a few apps claim to play FLAC
Thanks for the replies gents.
So, basically we're saying that wma lossless is 2nd best to FLAC which is 2nd best to wav?
I've downloaded Exact Audio Copy for ripping which seems to be spoken of very highly. Sadly, some of the ropey sounding mp3s were downloaded from the likes of Play.com so I had no I don't think it's just down to the encoding?
So, basically we're saying that wma lossless is 2nd best to FLAC which is 2nd best to wav?
I've downloaded Exact Audio Copy for ripping which seems to be spoken of very highly. Sadly, some of the ropey sounding mp3s were downloaded from the likes of Play.com so I had no I don't think it's just down to the encoding?
MartinM said:
So, basically we're saying that wma lossless is 2nd best to FLAC which is 2nd best to wav?
Not quite. There should be no difference in sound quality between wav, flac and wma lossless as they are all lossless formats. The main differences are things like support in hardware, file size, tagging support, etc. (Some people say that you can hear the difference between wav and compressed lossless formats, but I'm keeping out of that one...)MartinM said:
I've downloaded Exact Audio Copy for ripping which seems to be spoken of very highly. Sadly, some of the ropey sounding mp3s were downloaded from the likes of Play.com so I had no I don't think it's just down to the encoding?
I used EAC to rip all my collection to flac and is indeed highly recommended (albeit less than user friendly). An alternative is dbpoweramp, but it is not free. Try ripping a CD to flac with EAC and then convert the flac to mp3 or wma using foobar2000 and a decent encoder like lame, and try this on your htc.Mike...
Thanks for your help Mike. I'm currently copying a CD to my hard-drive using EAC. Can you tell me which codec to use to convert to flac before copying to my phone's SD card?
ETA. I've downloaded the Poweramp app to the phone (which i understand plays flac). I'm now using it as my audio player and I have to say I'm very impressed with it so far.
Cheers
Martin
ETA. I've downloaded the Poweramp app to the phone (which i understand plays flac). I'm now using it as my audio player and I have to say I'm very impressed with it so far.
Cheers
Martin
Edited by MartinM on Friday 22 July 10:45
Really think there must be something wrong with the encoding process on your mp3s. I very much doubt anyone could tell the difference between a correctly ripped v0 mp3 and a lossless file, when played through the sort of hardware you're talking about (earbuds and a mobile phone). You sure the phone isn't applying some daft sound processing to the files (my Desire HD can do this)?
I've got two libraries at home - FLAC library for the hifi and an identical mp3 library (ripped from the FLAC) for the ipod. Can easily tell the difference between lossy/lossless on the hifi, but absolutely no chance on the ipod.
I've got two libraries at home - FLAC library for the hifi and an identical mp3 library (ripped from the FLAC) for the ipod. Can easily tell the difference between lossy/lossless on the hifi, but absolutely no chance on the ipod.
Thanks again. I've just converted an album to FLAC via EAC and uploaded to my SD card. Just got to wait 'til the journey home now so I can have a listen!
Regarding the HTC buggering up the sound, I'm not 100% sure but I've ditched the native player and am using the Poweramp app (not to be confused with dbPoweramp). At high volume I can still detect a fair bit of distortion at the top end of the mp3s (I have a variety upto and including purchased 240kbps ones), not so with the wavs.
Regarding the HTC buggering up the sound, I'm not 100% sure but I've ditched the native player and am using the Poweramp app (not to be confused with dbPoweramp). At high volume I can still detect a fair bit of distortion at the top end of the mp3s (I have a variety upto and including purchased 240kbps ones), not so with the wavs.
mike_knott said:
(Some people say that you can hear the difference between wav and compressed lossless formats, but I'm keeping out of that one...)
Let me guess, they can also detect an 'slightly warmer tone and better separation of the sound-stage' when the screw-heads on the wall sockets are all pointing exactly vertically?
wiffmaster said:
Precisely.
I'll offer anyone £1,000,000 who can successfully differentiate between two lossless formats (regardless of compression) and can do so with a 90% accuracy rate across 50 songs. Entry costs just £1.
They did this test on The Gadget show a few years ago. From memory they used a record player, a CD player and a MP3 player, all through the same AMP and speakers. No one guessed which was which.I'll offer anyone £1,000,000 who can successfully differentiate between two lossless formats (regardless of compression) and can do so with a 90% accuracy rate across 50 songs. Entry costs just £1.
MartinM said:
As the audio in my daily driver is awful, I tend to listen to music on my phone (HTC Desire) but to be honest I'm fed up with the crappy sound qualities of mp3. After ripping an album to wav, copying to the HTC and listening to it on headphones ....
Driving.....with headphones ? 
Really?
Apologies if I've misunderstood and that's not what you are doing but if it is then
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