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WMA support

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saratoga:

--- Quote from: Speedforneed on September 08, 2006, 01:10:56 AM ---
--- Quote from: L on September 08, 2006, 12:41:31 AM ---I simply think it's better and easily to convert it to other formats. Why rip in WMA anyway? It's a crappy format =/

--- End quote ---

Well, I can give you a couple (good?) reasons.  (I'm not a WMA person, I use WavPack.)  That being said...

1.  WMA comes standard on all most PCs these days with Windows installed.  MP3's do too, but it's not the default rip setting.


--- End quote ---

Rockbox is not the default on any player either.  People who manage to use it can manage to change a setting or use a good ripper instead of WMP.


--- Quote from: Speedforneed on September 08, 2006, 01:10:56 AM ---2.  They are advertised to be just as good as MP3s.  (I see the WMA 64KBPS == MP3 128KBPS comparison a lot.)

--- End quote ---

Its completely made up.  WMA is a crummy old format that MS hasn't developed enough to keep up with other codecs.  Modern MP3 seems to edge out WMA above 48-64kbps anyway.


--- Quote from: Speedforneed on September 08, 2006, 01:10:56 AM ---    a.  Assuming that was actually true (or just taken seriously), a user would just twice as much audio on that device.

--- End quote ---

Assuming MIDI was as good as FLAC, we could fit 1000x as much material on a DAP.  Unfortunately, things that sound too good to be true usually are.

Speedforneed:
Well, I thought I would give it a shot.  At any rate, I can agree with the comments that saratoga made.  I'm just trying to think of views that an inexperienced computer user would think.

That being said, if I were to Rockbox my friends player, and then find out that he is not as tech-sazy as I thought (uses WMAs because he does not know how to use anything else), he can still use Rockbox fine.  The only real tricky part to Rockbox in my opinion seems to be the creating the patched firmware, and then flashing it.  Having said that, let me further my comments.  Like I said though, I'm not a WMA supporter.  In fact, I probably don't even have any.


--- Quote ---Rockbox is not the default on any player either.  People who manage to use it can manage to change a setting or use a good ripper instead of WMP.
--- End quote ---
I should also add that by default, as with WMP9 anyway, one must buy the ability to rip as MP3s.  (Microsoft Plus!?)


--- Quote ---2.  They are advertised to be just as good as MP3s.  (I see the WMA 64KBPS == MP3 128KBPS comparison a lot.)
--- Quote ---That claim was made, by Microsoft, years ago, using a then-current WMA encoder compared to a then-outdate MP3 encoder.  Even if the claim were once true--and I've never seen any listening tests that show that it was--it is no longer so.  The LAME codec has made huge strides since then.
--- End quote ---

--- End quote ---
I believe they advertised 64KBPS as CD, or at least near CD quality.  With this one, I saw it a lot back in the day, but now I really don't.  Then again, I don't have a reason to shop for MP3 players.

Edit:  Hmm...  I made a lot of typos.

saratoga:
I believe the MP3 encoder is actually free in recent versions of WMP.  If you install WMP10 or maybe XP SP2 it silently installs the encoder for you.  Its a pretty old encoder though, and doesn't support gapless, so I would not recommend using it.

Antony:
Either way stop bashing wma, i think everyone here is probably sick and tired about hearing the same old arguments. The fact remains some people have wma files that they would like to play on rockbox, and it so far it does not support wma.

Anyway, the point of my post is that marsdaddy has released as much of the patch as he has managed, and is now posted in the patch tracker.

I would like to say thankyou very much to him for all the work he is done so far, and I thought this might alert someone who is interested in carrying on his work - i wish i was good enough to do to help, but unfortunately i do not know enough about it.

So, i would like to thank anyone who continues the patch in advance!

Febs:

--- Quote from: Antony on September 15, 2006, 01:36:34 PM ---Either way stop bashing wma
--- End quote ---
With the possible exception of Saratoga's comment "WMA is a crummy old format," I haven't seen any WMA bashing in this thread.

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