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Is Windows Media Lossless Lossless???

Like many of you out there I've been building my own music server on PC, with the goal of remote controlling it over wireless home network by Pocket PC. IMHO the servers available commrcially right now are either way too expensive, don't support uncompressed, or require you to use a TV to view your entire library in any useful, sortable fashion unless you add an even more expensive control system like Crestron. I don't know about you but I don't want the TV or computer monitor on when it's music time, and I don't want a hardwired touch screen on my coffee table, so for now it's Pocket PC for me.

OK, starting with a spanking new 300 Gig drive, my CD Favorites library was first copied in as WAV's. Then I discovered WAV's don't support tagging, at least not in a uniform standard (the jukeboxes I'm trying to remote control with pocket PC, either J. River, Windows Media or WInAmp, don't recognize MusicMatch WAV tags). This means, to the jukeboxes I can control with PocketPC, my WAV libray is 2000 INDIVIDUAL SONGS, not groupable by artist or album, which means the list is HUGE.

So, I put everything in again as Window Media Lossless, which has built-in tags and sorts by album, artist, even has album cover info embedded. J. River Media Center reads the tags, so does WMP 9 or 10, so does MusicMatch. Everything shows up and works on a Pocket PC running NetRemote running J. River. Very elegant GUI. 80 Gigs becmae 40 Gigs. Great, right? EXCEPT I can hear the difference between WMA Lossless and WAV or the original CD!!! Think I'm nuts? Here's what I hear, tell me if you agree:

-Compressed dynamics.
-Softened transients.
-Big nasty screeches from either physical disc read errors or when I had my PC doing something else intesive while ripping. The same song ripped to WAV has no screech!
-Pops at beginnning of albums or individual songs
-And it's not a volume difference!!!

This is playing the same song as WAV and WMA Lossless back to back out of the PC, which eliminates the possiblity of extra jitter coming from the Creative Labs PC soundcard digital out (although does not eliminate the possiblity that WMA lossless generates more jitter than WAV on playback). I also hear the same differences when WMA Lossless is compared to the original CD using digital outs of various Sony gear. My system:

Musical Fidelity CD Pre 24 (multiple digital ins)
Musical Fidelity A308 CR Amp
Harbeth Compact 7 ES-2's or
SoundLab Dynastats
Creative Soundlabs Digital PC Output set at 44.1 KHz, but can run up to 96 kHz/ 24 bit.

I'm very interested to hear if anyone else hears what I hear. Or can suggest a better lossless (although you'd best be sure as this will mean ripping it all again!).

Thanks for listening.
jee
jee OP
8 posts
 
This is specifically to Riverside13:

Luckily I kept my WAV file names organized, Artist-Album-Track#-Title, so just now J. River parsed them nicely into Artist, Album, Title columns, and NetRemote sees it. One problem solved, WAV's playing on J. River controlled by Pocket PC all nicely organized. Thanks for the idea! Even looks up and finds on CD database most of the time. No album covers yet, still working on it. One question:

Do you think EAC makes a better file copy than ripping to WAV with MusicMatch or J. River? I used a mix of Creative and MusicMatch's rippers to build my original WAV library, a process I just assumed was a bit for bit tranfer from CD to hard disc. Now playing WAV's, I already hear a big jump in quality over the WMA's. Can I go farther? Dare I?

- Jack
edesilva
768 posts
 
What comes out of a computer can most definitely approach a CD player. I don't use a soundcard at all--I use a waveterminal U24 USB audio device that can be plugged into my outboard DAC via coax. Its dangerously close to my DV-50s.

I had huge problems with MM's ripping software, but it may have gotten better. EAC does a good job and, I've heard, iTunes is fairly good. I believe J. River maintains they do a better job than EAC. Can't vouch there, I haven't used it, but I gather in secure mode it does the same thing that EAC does--rereads sectors until it gets consistent matching of data.
jazzdude
332 posts
 
WMA is definitely lossy compression. I think FLAC supports tags but don't know an uncompressed format that supports tags universally. Foobar lets you tag wav files but other applications will have difficulty reading the files and tags.

I have at least 10k+ wav files all sorted in subdirectories by artist and album. EAC did it automatically as they were ripped. I don't need tagging or some external app to help me find the song I am looking for. I may never understand the point of tagging.
extra_action
52 posts
 
I noticed the same thing with Window lossless several years ago. I was getting inconsistant results depending on hardware use and conditon of CD. After extensive research i switched to EAC for ripping and FLAC for lossless compression.
The sound quality of this combo (EAC+FLAC) has been flawless.
One caveat is that FLAC is not supported by iTunes, but being an ardent supporter of open source is chose community support over propriety software.
It may seem that Mac is on an unstoppable upward trajectory but that is what i thought in the early 80's and the company all but disappeared for several years. I don't wan't my entire musical collection and its future support dependant on a CEO's mood swings. My vote would be to stick with open source lossless
edesilva
768 posts
 
Jazzdude-

Just like AAC, WMA *can* be lossless, I believe. There are provisions for .wav > lossless WMA that will be bit-for-bit identical if the WMA is converted back to .wav. The "author" of the WMA has some options in terms of amount of compression vs. lossy nature of compression. Same goes for AAC.
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