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Subject:the size of WAVs
Posted by: tibby
Date:8/18/2004 4:52:11 PM

I've developed my ear to the point that most all compression sounds awful to me.

Some WMAs variable Bit, at the highest samping rate sound great. But I've been considering re-recording all my CD music (off of commercial CDs) as WAVs.

I have just under 2,600 songs, presumably at 3-6 minutes each. Now they;re 10 GBs (as WMAs, some MP3s).

Anyone know how I can do the math to figure how large a hard drive I need to store all those songs? (I have one WAV that's 4.05 min & is 40 MB -- very large.)

***
2nd question: Is WMA losless a good second choice (to keep disk space down), if I may eventually want to sample these for projects in Acid, etc

Subject:RE: the size of WAVs
Reply by: rome
Date:8/18/2004 8:25:22 PM

2600 (songs) * 4.5 min (average) = 11700 minutes * 10MB (wav stereo minute) =

117 GB

Subject:RE: the size of WAVs
Reply by: rome
Date:8/18/2004 8:26:42 PM

Keep in mind, If you're converting from mp3 or wma to wav, you won't regain quality.

Subject:RE: the size of WAVs
Reply by: tibby
Date:8/19/2004 4:28:57 AM

I've had some good experiences rendering songs as WMA LOSSLESS (highest sample quality).

I could do this to save some HD space, but is this inadvisable, compared to saving them as WAVs?

I'm under the impression that WAVs are the highest quality, & also the gold standard when using most digital work stations. Is this right? Do most apps that handle propreitary formats also handle WAVs? (ACID, for example, uses that Sony PCD format, as well as WAVs.)

Thanks for your advice.

Subject:RE: the size of WAVs
Reply by: DKeenum
Date:8/19/2004 7:16:54 AM

Wavs and Aiffs are kind of universal. Most recording apps can play them.

Subject:RE: the size of WAVs
Reply by: Rednroll
Date:8/19/2004 12:05:00 PM

Here's a comparison study I've done in the past looking at the spectral content after saving to a compressed format. The original file was a 10Meg Pink noise Wave file. Maybe this can be useful to you. If you're strictly using Sony apps, then maybe you should consider their PCA format. From my study it shows that it doesn't save much on file size using a pink noise signal, but this compression ratio drastically improves with normal music. This is a lossless compression, so no sound quality gets lost from the original WAVE format. I personally find .MP3 at 192Kbs or higher to be very exceptable where I can not hear a difference. From my study you can see that 320Kbs .MP3 seems to have no loss of spectral quality.

Data below, shows compression format followed by the compressed file size, compared to the original 10Mb WAVE, followed by compression ratio, and then spectral side effects. Full range, means the compressed format matched up identical to the original WAVE file spectral content.

Format File Size Compression Comp ratio Frequency Response
.WAV 10.0 Mb Full Range
.PCA 8.79 Mb 1.4:1 Full Range
.MP3 2.29 Mb 320 Kbs 4.37:1 Full Range
.MP3 1.37 Mb 192 Kbs 7.3:1 Brickwall Low-pass at 20 Khz, slight roll off starting at 15Khz
.MP3 939 Kb 128 Kbs 10.65:1 Brickwall Low-pass at 15.8Khz
.MP3 470 Kb 64 Kbs 21.28:1 Brickwall Low-pass at 10Khz
.Ogg 972 Kb 128Kbs 10.29:1 Full Range with a +3dB High Freq boast starting at 10Khz
.Ogg 696 Kb 96Kbs 14.37:1 Brickwall Low-pass at 16.5 Khz with a +3dB 10Khz boast starting at 10Khz
.WMA 2.34 Mb 320Kbs 4.27:1 Brickwall Low-pass at 20.3Khz
.WMA 1.17 Mb 160Kbs 8.55:1 Brickwall Low-pass at 19Khz
.WMA 965 Kb 128Kbs 10.36:1 Brickwall Low-pass at 17.8Khz

From the data above in my opinion for compression to quality comparison, it seems like you get the best bang for your buck from the Vorbis .ogg format. I got a full range response at 128Kbs with a slight boast at the extreme high frequencies, but not bad for a 10:1 compression ratio. Now, I didn't do a stereo seperation comparison, that's another day

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