Music Compression - General Questions and Answers

Does anyone know of a software that will allow the compression of music files from the device, without having to connect to PC? I have files 3-4 MB a piece, and I would like to get them down to about 1-2 MB, so I can store more music than I have. Thanks in advance.

Wrong section to post in.. but you would have to re-encode your files. The music you speak of is already compressed (mp3s/aac/whatever codec your music is stored in), so what you are asking for (two fold decrease)really is not possible unless you are willing to take a quality hit (by lowering the bitrate), but lets just say re encoding an already compressed format is not a good idea(lowering the bitrate at the same time would be a double wammy), unless you want your music to sound likes its coming from a tin can... Either way you would have to copy to your PC.

I meant lowering the bitrate, still the same enroding all mp3 codec. Ah, I guess I'll just do it before transferring to memory card, but sometimes I download from the mobile browser, and that's an extra step.

Related

Is it possible to set Alarm with your choice of MP3?

Is it possible on the XDA 2 to set an alarm that will play an MP3 audio stored on SD Card?
May be there is some kind of software that can be installed to do this? Preferably freeware :!: :?: :roll: :?
Thanks in advance.
i would think it pretty easy if you changed it to wma and set it up in sounds and notifications or what ever that entry in systems is called
Thanks for suggestion. However, the problem with converting MP3 to wav (using dbPowerAMP) causes the MP3 to grow to a huge size. 1.9MB converts to 30MB!
I imagine the same would happen if I were to convert to wma using an appropriate converter.
Any other suggestions?
cdex is a pretty good and free encoder for the pc platform
it can make wav mp3 and make wav wma and make mp3 vma and ....
when it's a not music you'll be listening to on your headset
you can limit the kb/sec to 64
wma at 64kb/sec dont take up more space then a mp3 at 64kb/sec
and sounds better
Ustad said:
Thanks for suggestion. However, the problem with converting MP3 to wav (using dbPowerAMP) causes the MP3 to grow to a huge size. 1.9MB converts to 30MB!
I imagine the same would happen if I were to convert to wma using an appropriate converter.
Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No mate.
Other way round.
Becuase mp3 and wma are compressed audio formats (small size) whereas wav is generally not (though you can use really silly low settings, but it would sound terrible).
So going from mp3 to wav will of course make a huge file.
BUT, going from mp3 to wma will produce a SMALLER file size even than your mp3, as it's a better format (i.e. smaller file size, at same or better quality)
I use 40 second wma tones for my XDA2. But for my girlfriend's Nokia, I have to use mp3.
My files at 96K quality, are around 500K file size. Her mp3 at same quality is around 585K for the same file.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for your advice - re MP3 to wma. I understand what you're saying. I downloaded dbPoweramp which has option to convert to from MP3 to wma but whenever I try to do it, it comes up with an message saying that I require appropriate Codec. Well that doesn't help me much. What the heck is a Codec, where do I get one from and how do I set it up?
I'm sure one of you guys will know! Thanks in advance.
:roll: :!: :?:
Ustad said:
Thanks for your advice - re MP3 to wma. I understand what you're saying. I downloaded dbPoweramp which has option to convert to from MP3 to wma but whenever I try to do it, it comes up with an message saying that I require appropriate Codec. Well that doesn't help me much. What the heck is a Codec, where do I get one from and how do I set it up?
I'm sure one of you guys will know! Thanks in advance.
:roll: :!: :?:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The same site you downloaded dbamp from...
Codecs are 'plugins' that handle conversation of all the different file types.
That way, you only need install the codec, for the type of conversion you want to do.
Here's the link for the codecs download page:
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central.htm
The direct link for the .wma codec however, is:
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-wma.htm
Thanks for that information. You've been a great help. You are right too. Well, mostly right. I downloaded the codec from the link you gave. I then converted MP3 to wma using the "Windows Media Audio V2" option from the Compressed option list. By default, this option gives the "Attirbutes" of 8kbps, 8kHz mono. I tried a few different attributes. Anything higher than 12kbps, 8kHz Stereo seems to convert the MP3 file to very large sizes like 26MB from a 1.9 MB MP3. Also I noticed that when done, it gives the file the extension of .wav rather than .wma. The sensibly sized file converted to around 296Kb. However, sound quality was not as good. Not too concerned about that since just want to use for alarm.
Getting there slowly.
Problem 1 - I copied the 296Kb wav file into the Windows folder of Pocket PC. Went to set alarm. The alarm list displays the converted file in the list of tunes to choose from, but when I try to choose the converted file, it automatically switches to an option named "Default". can't understand why.
Problem 2 - One converted file (mp3 to wav rather than to wma) was selectable as a tune for alarm. However, when the alram goes off, it only lasts for about 10 seconds. How did you manage to set yours to 40 seconds?
Any further advice? Am I doing something wrong?
Forget it. Use freeware Wolf Clock instead.
Ustad...
If it says .wav, it IS a .wav
That's why the file is so large.
Not sure what has happened, but you HAVEN'T created a .wma file from it.
To be fair though, I use a different tool to convert, that requires registration, so maybe you should try the other converter suggested above.
use super alert to set mp3s as alarms. works like a charm. www.pocketgear.com.
Thanks for you help guys. I've just downloaded test trial version of super alert and is look quite good so far.
Will update after I get a chance to play aroud with.
:wink:
jonlien & the rest of you - THANK YOU very much indeed. “Super Alert” seems to be working fine. Not a very user friendly interface, but the darn thing works. It plays mp3 audios at the clock alarm time. This is great news. I’ve been dying to find a functionality such as this for ages. Can’t understand why Pocket PC doesn’t allow mp3s to be playable direcly via clock alarm settings anyway.
If anyone else decides to use “Super Alert” – please bear in mind that the program doesn’t allow u to select an mp3 directly. Instead it allows u to choose a Playlist which u can define via Windows Media Player. So the thing to do is to define a song you want to use as a Playlist item and select that playlist item in “Super Alert”.
Little tip – to avoid any interference (“Clock Alarm” sound, message display, repetition etc) from the actual XDA’s “Clock Alarm”, remove all the ticks from the options in the “Clock Alarm” for the time you have set the alarm to go off. This was, only the mp3 will play at the designated time and not the XDA’s “Clock Alarm”. This may be obvious to some of you techy guys but I had to mess about to get it to work smoothly.
I’ve only had time to figure out what I’ve said above and only found this use for “Super Alert”. If anyone has found useful/clever ideas or tips, would love to hear.
Once again, thanks to you all. :wink:
Wolf Clock – Freeware – I did a quick search for this via Google. Didn’t find anything for PDA called Wold Clock. Could anyone send me a link for this please. Any comments about Wolf Clock. Is it any good? :?:
google.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=wolfclock&sourceid=opera&num=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Wasn't so hard
Actually it's too feature full for me but it's a freeware and it works...
pTravelAlarm also looks nice. I've got sthg like this:
PTravelAlarm.v1.4
Jarekt - Many thanks. WolfClock seems like a much better idea. I couldn't find it because I was looking for "wolf clock" instead of "wolfclock".
Some great advice received from people. Thanks to all.
WOLFCLOCK - Problems!!!
It appears that most of the time the alarm mutes itself and ends up not going off, although the alarm function appears activated on the display - U can see the Alarm off and Snooze buttons at the time the alarm is set, but there is just no sound!!!!
It also switches the fone sound off so when a call comes in, it doesnt ring. And i need to turn off wolfclock at the running programs place so that the sound will come bk. It doesnt simply adjust the volume of the PDA, but somehow, mutes the entire fone.
Can anyone advise please :?: :?: :?:
PS - Super Alert seems to be working fine, but interface is crap!!
You can try mortplayer, which is also freeware + plays Mp3s/Ogg + has an alarm built-in. It's like killing a few birds at once.
http://www.sto-helit.de/freeware/pocketpc/mortplayer-en.pl

How to copy music from CD to SD

Hi,
I'm using o2 mini & have a problem which need your help.
1/ Pls consult me what software for compressing music files from CD & then copy it to SD. Pls instruct me the way to do it.
2/ I'm looking for the software to watch films. Pls advise me what software can give the best pictures & fully sreen.
3/Can I use CD music to be ringstone. The way to do it.
Thank you very much in advance.
Hi Baloo,
Ok, let's do it step by step:
1) CD to SD:
For this you can use Audiograbber, which gets the audio tracks from your CDs (as long as your CDs aren't copy protected, otherwise you'll might run into troubles) on your PC and converts them into MP3 tracks. These MP3s you can put onto your SD card (using a card reader or via cable).
2) Watching films on your device:
Normally all PocketPCs come with windows media player, which can be used to view videos too. As I personally dislike WMP, I use BetaPlayer, which is a very nice video player and is able to play AC3, MP4, AVI films and also MP3 audio files.
3) Music as ringtones:
After having done the steps mentioned in 1), you should be able to use your MP3 files as ringtones too. I'm using the term "should be", because this depends on the capabilities and settings of your PocketPC (normally it should work, but there are some users who reportet problems - for more information just use the search function of this forum). As an alternative you also can use WAV files (they also can be made with Audigrabber) as ringtones, but they are about ten times larger in file size.
Just a little further note:
When using MP3s or WAVs as ringtones, you should place them on the internal memory of your device, because otherwise they may not be played (SD cards need some time to be activated when the PocketPC returns from sleep mode).
As a complete MP3 music file normally is about 4 MB of size (which is a lot), you should edit the MP3 you want to use and shorten it to about 20 seconds (look here, too). With this, you keep your memory and have your personal ring tone too
For more informations, just use the search function of this forum.
HTH,
BGK

Which Media Player supports loseless Audio

Hey guys!!
Just back my O2 Atom Exec and updated it to WM6. I have an extensive collection of loseless audio and i was curious as to which media player supports it. They are in a couple of format, with most of them being in .wv and .ape and the rest in .flac.
I have installed Coreplayer and Pocket Player 3.2 and tried .wv and .flac files.
Coreplayer plays .flac fine but the library kind of sucks and it ain't easy to browse through your collection of music. However, it wont detect the .wv file.
Pocket Player on the other hand simply wont work with either despite claiming on the website that it does. I have tried opening the .flac audio manually but the name of the song (time after time) becomes illegible (like with my chinese song) and when i try to play it, it doesnt work. It says the filetype is .mp3 but that is not true, it is actually .flac....what the?? Also tried to manually open .wv but doesn't work either
So i am confused as to which program actually does work with all the lossless format? Could someone enlgihten.
Btw i did find this link http://www.losslessaudioblog.com/2006/12/16/mobile-lossless-players/
that had all the supported player that claims to support loseless format.
Also, could someone explain why i cant read chinese/japanese filenames? Any fixs so i can see it properly on pocketplayer/coreplayer?
Common guys, as if no one prefers loseless over mp3..
Sorry mate, I used to play flac using TCPMP( free version of coreplayer) was impressed with the sound but not the size of the files. sticking to AACplus now, good luck
haha are you joking get a bigger memory card or one of those special mp3 player
the quality is just so much better
davidw89 said:
haha are you joking get a bigger memory card or one of those special mp3 player
the quality is just so much better
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Music file size ratio is generally a personal preference and you dont just go 'haha' on others preferences. If bigger memory card is not your problem, I'd guess you can always play the high quality lossless WAV on your WMPlayer
Anyway, not much help from me here, read on if you wish.
Anyway, as for lossless or not audio file format, I really wonder how much difference does it make. I personally can't really tell the difference as I'm using relatively low quality earphones and stuff, and consider I listen it when I'm on the move, where you get street noises and such (despite the noise isolation property of the earphones). So, it would be interesting if you were to do a blind test yourself on a relatively real environment. That, is to get a list of songs, say 10-20 songs, all both in the flac, and mp3 formats. Get a friend of you to play you these songs at random (using Coreplayer, which support both format), then you make a guess on which format the song is playing. Get a good number of samples and see if you score above 75%. If you score around 40-60%, chances are, you are thinking (mentally biased) that the sound is actually better than it is (e.g. due to the distortion of the A2D converter, crack in the shielding screen on your headphone, street noises, etc.). If you were to score 25% or lower, that's interestingly MP3 is better (much unlikely).
If you really do this, let me know the results Much eager to know it.
Problem for me is, I am the type who like to have just one device to rule "do" them all, that's why my lowly wizard does it all, my video player, music player, pda and telephone. I only got 2Gb but I got heaps of songs on it plus some movies.
AAc plus is good mate better than MP3 IMHO, I heard flac but the size is just not worth it.. and I don't clean my ears that often ;-) so why bother..

ogg file scanning - does not read artist info

I have some ogg vorbis music files. When the Music folder is scanned it reads in the information properly from mp3 files, but not ogg files. It shows "Unknown Artist". I have checked the tags and the Artist is there. In addition, some programs display the Artist information (from the tag) when playing. But when you go to search by artist, all apps (I have tried several) show "Unknown Artist".
Does anyone know where the media scanning code is located? Maybe I could look at it and see why it isn't handling ogg files.
Thanks.
A fellow Vorbis user!
I have never gotten any ROM to view Vorbis tags - I also had this issue on early Pandigital Novel tablet ROM's, which were later corrected. I already asked VS CS to fix this, but I always assumed that I was the only one who ever called them about this.
I'm not sure if this is kernel or framework based.
Well, I see there is an MediaStore and associated classes and given that multiple music apps seem to be sharing the scanned library, I suspect it is in the Android code, not the Linux kernel. On my Ubuntu there is no problem with ogg files either. So any idea where to find the media scanning code?
Thanks.
Unfortunately I don't know. I usually use an app like Rockbox, which uses its own database.
Deleted duplicate
Yeah, I've noticed this as well, even on my Droid. It's definitely in the android code.
It's tough being a vorbis user...
Hey, just thought I'd chime in if you didn't mind me.
Yeah, I have a huge collection of Ogg Vorbis files on my computer, and my media player software on my laptop does not read tags either (my files were converted from mp3s, I thought maybe the tags were stripped out).
Same thing on my GTablet and my Nexus One, non of my media player software on Android reads the tags either (if they still exist).
In my case, the tags are definitely there - I know because I'm meticulous with adding them. My Cowon S9 sees them, Rhythmbox sees them, but not the music players on this device (except Rockbox).
Want this fixed? Call VS and complain, in all seriousness. I think the guy on the phone almost laughed at me when I told him Vorbis tags were broken. Not exactly high on their priority list.
Btw, transcoding MP3's to Vorbis should be avoided, if at all possible. It's a lossy to lossy transfer, which means that there will be quality loss. Think of the old days of copying a VHS tape to another tape - each generation is inferior to the previous one. If you can, keep your "master" copy as a lossless file like ALAC or FLAC, and from the best source you can find (like a CD). That way, you can make lossy copies from that lossless source to reduce quality losss.
(I'm a big music fan).
roebeet said:
Btw, transcoding MP3's to Vorbis should be avoided, if at all possible. It's a lossy to lossy transfer, which means that there will be quality loss. Think of the old days of copying a VHS tape to another tape - each generation is inferior to the previous one. If you can, keep your "master" copy as a lossless file like ALAC or FLAC, and from the best source you can find (like a CD). That way, you can make lossy copies from that lossless source to reduce quality losss.
(I'm a big music fan).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, well, gotta conserve space somewhere (and I don't have a FLAC converter).
Still, I need space for more music and since OGG helps me to save space a little bit, it's totally worth it for me.
Sorry, but I lose my master copies as soon as the conversion is done. The originals were copies from CDs using other software (as in, straight from the CD audio .cda to .MP3 and then to .OGG, but not always. Sometimes, I go straight to .OGG.).
I put the CDs back in their cases and the temporary file is deleted is what I mean.
I remember VHS tapes!
Wow, I feel old... I wonder if their quality degrades over time?
I'd hate to see what they look like now...

Whats the point of Google Music?

If Google Music just saves and caches all of your online songs to your storage on your phone, what's the point? I can just use less battery with poweramp.
It's a good music player with the convenient option to stream music. If you don't like it, uncheck the box for streaming in the settings. Not a big deal.
the_v1s1onary said:
It's a good music player with the convenient option to stream music. If you don't like it, uncheck the box for streaming in the settings. Not a big deal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But what's streaming about it? All of your songs get downloaded to data/app
nklenchik said:
But what's streaming about it? All of your songs get downloaded to data/app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course it gets saved, it has to save it somewhere. If you don't want the files on your phone then just turn off caching in Google Music settings. All streaming services do the same thing, on your phone, PC, or anything else: a "streamed" file must be saved somewhere, either in RAM or on disk, in order to be used.
Now to answer your initial question, Google Music is a useful service because it allows me to access my entire 200+GB music library on the go without physically having 200GB of music on my phone.
I was excited to hear that I could upload all my music to the google. I only have 20 GB so it was nice at first. Then it got too inconvenient so I uninstalled from my phone.
For a while it was my only music player, but it doesn't have the option of setting a song as a ringer, so I had to reinstall the stock music app.
Problem 1 -
A) The music information takes close 5 minutes to show up on my phone, every time.
B) Then, if I select 'play album,' the first track repeats continuously until I manually skip to the next.
C) There is no alphabet shortcut to the right, so if I want to listen to Seal, I have to scroll for a looong time. Did I mention I only use this while driving!!
Problem 2 - Then I learned that Google converts all sample rates to the standard 128kbit/s. Sorry, most of my music is sampled a lot higher than that so I can't even use it as a backup of my music.
Problem 3 - I have found mp3s that are corrupt so I will need to rip them again. But, once I upload then delete from the google cloud, the music manager won't decide to upload that album again. Not even if I delete the old, rip the cd again, then copy into the music directory. WTF
I understand this isn't dynamic syncing like dropbox, it's just dumb storage but come on, a little more effort could be made to deal with these small things.
In the end with the data caps carriers are imposing cloud based services really don't make a lot of sense. Then add in the fact that a dropped connection can corrupt the file and SDcards start looking a whole lot better
Nuenjin said:
I was excited to hear that I could upload all my music to the google. I only have 20 GB so it was nice at first. Then it got too inconvenient so I uninstalled from my phone.
For a while it was my only music player, but it doesn't have the option of setting a song as a ringer, so I had to reinstall the stock music app.
Problem 1 -
A) The music information takes close 5 minutes to show up on my phone, every time.
B) Then, if I select 'play album,' the first track repeats continuously until I manually skip to the next.
C) There is no alphabet shortcut to the right, so if I want to listen to Seal, I have to scroll for a looong time. Did I mention I only use this while driving!!
Problem 2 - Then I learned that Google converts all sample rates to the standard 128kbit/s. Sorry, most of my music is sampled a lot higher than that so I can't even use it as a backup of my music.
Problem 3 - I have found mp3s that are corrupt so I will need to rip them again. But, once I upload then delete from the google cloud, the music manager won't decide to upload that album again. Not even if I delete the old, rip the cd again, then copy into the music directory. WTF
I understand this isn't dynamic syncing like dropbox, it's just dumb storage but come on, a little more effort could be made to deal with these small things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definite +1.
I'm not in a 4G area right now and my songs always skip every minute to buffer (since I unchecked cache to sd)
The UI isn't all that great to be honest...going back to PowerAMP.
And regarding the 128kbps, I can't deal with that. Every time I download a song I convert it to 224
nklenchik said:
...
And regarding the 128kbps, I can't deal with that. Every time I download a song I convert it to 224
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Convert it from what? You can't add back information that has already been lost so all you'd be doing is another lossy re-encode, making it even worse.
Anyway, 128kbps would be a deal breaker for me as all my rips are 320kbps from source. Streaming can only make matters worse too.
Is it the same as ics music player?
NookColor Cyanogenmod 7.1 "Overclocked"
DirkGently said:
Convert it from what? You can't add back information that has already been lost so all you'd be doing is another lossy re-encode, making it even worse.
Anyway, 128kbps would be a deal breaker for me as all my rips are 320kbps from source. Streaming can only make matters worse too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From 320/256. Trust me I'm a communications major haha
nklenchik said:
From 320/256. Trust me I'm a communications major haha
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you're sacrificing fidelity to, what..? Gain back a little storage space? Personally i'd buy more storage space!
DirkGently said:
So you're sacrificing fidelity to, what..? Gain back a little storage space? Personally i'd buy more storage space!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ill download a song if it's at least 192kbps or more. If it's more I'll bring them down to 224 kbps. And I'm full on my gnex at 4,200 songs right now unfortunately I have to delete stfd I don't listen to anymore haha

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