WMA support

[Llorean]

I believe WMA support has been unofficially exempted from that requirement, mainly because nobody wants to have to be the one to do it.

As it is, simply put, if you own the CD, you can rip to a better format. If you don't own the CD then your use of the music is probably infringing someone's copyright as it is. Rockbox will never be able to support DRMed WMA anyway.

[Mmmm]

If you don't own the CD then your use of the music is probably infringing someone's copyright as it is.

Well, that's not true..there is loads of non-DRM'd free and non copyright infringing music to be downloaded out there...

[Yotto]

Well, that's not true..there is loads of non-DRM'd free and non copyright infringing music to be downloaded out there...

In WMA format?

[Mmmm]

Well, that's not true..there is loads of non-DRM'd free and non copyright infringing music to be downloaded out there...

In WMA format?

Probably.......somewhere

[Febs]

2.  They are advertised to be just as good as MP3s.  (I see the WMA 64KBPS == MP3 128KBPS comparison a lot.)
    a.  Assuming that was actually true (or just taken seriously), a user would just twice as much audio on that device.

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.

[saratoga]

I simply think it's better and easily to convert it to other formats. Why rip in WMA anyway? It's a crappy format =/

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.

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.

2.  They are advertised to be just as good as MP3s.  (I see the WMA 64KBPS == MP3 128KBPS comparison a lot.)

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.

   a.  Assuming that was actually true (or just taken seriously), a user would just twice as much audio on that device.

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.

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.

I should also add that by default, as with WMP9 anyway, one must buy the ability to rip as MP3s.  (Microsoft Plus!?)

2.  They are advertised to be just as good as MP3s.  (I see the WMA 64KBPS == MP3 128KBPS comparison a lot.)

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.

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]

Either way stop bashing wma

With the possible exception of Saratoga's comment "WMA is a crummy old format," I haven't seen any WMA bashing in this thread.

[baobab68]

You're right, the thread bashes people supposedly "dumb" enough to use WMA, not WMA itself.

[Febs]

The only person who has said anything about WMA users being "dumb" is YOU:

There are an awful lot of people out there who do use WMA. Maybe we are all dummies, as we have been called before, but like it or not, it's the default rip method in the operating system that 'owns' 90-something-percent of the market.

[baobab68]

You're right, and when I said it I was quoting one of the senior devs of the Rockbox project.

[Antony]

Either way stop bashing wma

With the possible exception of Saratoga's comment "WMA is a crummy old format," I haven't seen any WMA bashing in this thread.

Ok, fair point there isnt a lot in this particular thread - although there is some, for once the arguments aren't supported by anything.

Either way, my main objective was to say that marsdaddy has released his code.

[pabouk]

...my main objective was to say that marsdaddy has released his code.

Yes, after a long time without posting any news marsdaddy released the latest version of his plug-in :
http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/4984
Thank you for your work, marsdaddy.