Why is it an MP3 player when all my shits a WMA?
Bleg: I just got my first MP3 player. Ok, actually, I got a phone (this one) that happens to play MP3s. I converted a few CDs to MP3 a while back. Now, when I convert them in Windows Media Player (which is what works with my phone), they’re WMAs. So, what are those? And what do I need to know about this MP3 player business?
December 6th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
WMA are from Microsoft and copy protected (prevented) from moving to music CDs and back to the compressed MP3 WMA form. MP3 can be played in most car CD players and portable CD players – very few can play WMA. MP3 is an older format and not copy protected and therefore more flexible – WMAs when you purchase them can not be moved to a CD.
December 6th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
WMAs are the ghey.
December 6th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Stick with an IPOD.
December 6th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Not all WMAs are copy protected but Guav is right. Use the Ogg Vorbis encoding wherever possible.
WMA is one of many ways to digitally encode music.
December 6th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Oh. I didn’t answer your question. MP3 player has almost become a generic term. And doesn’t the IPOD use some stupid apple encoding?
December 6th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
You can rip cds to your PC or dload them from ITUNES or any other dload site and listen to them on your IPOD. You just cant listen to songs you dload from ITUNES on another MP3 player other than an IPOD.
December 6th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
Microsoft’s software automatically defualts all ripped audio media to the .wma (Windows Media Audio) container file type. This consists of a few standardized audio formats, and compatibility with the .asf container format.
It’s roughly comparable to mp3, except licensed by Microsoft rather than Thomson Computer Electronics, and isn’t as popular outside of Microsoft devices. It does include lossless format options (as opposed to mp3’s lossy compression-only techniques), although most users find that useless (‘lossy’ techniques usually remove only data human ears can’t hear).
To rip all future CDs to .mp3 format rather .wma, go to “Tools -> Options…” Click the “Rip Music” tab, and look in the grey area labeled “Rip Settings”. Click the dropdown box labeled “Format” (it should have Windows Media Audio) and look for “MP3”. Once you’ve set it to that, hit OK. As for “Audio Quality”, most people can’t tell the difference between files greater than 128 Kbps (the minimum for Windows Media Player with MP3 files), so you should be set there.
December 6th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Oh, actually, the LG Vx-8500 supports WMA (and MP3, AAC, AAC+, AAC++), so I guess you don’t need to bother messing with settings.
They’re just different formats, nothing more. One might sound slightly better than the other, or produce files with a small difference in file size, but unless you have incredibly good ears or are talking differences of a couple hundred kilobytes, it won’t matter.
December 7th, 2006 at 10:29 am
I received my LG Chocolate yesterday, Uncle. I’m going to see if I can get my hands on a data cable and put actual MP3s on there as none of my media is in WMA format at this point.
You might have luck with the software BitPim if you want to do things w/ it that Verizon blocks off.
December 7th, 2006 at 10:31 am
I put the MP3s on it no problem. But it only holds 16 songs or so. I need to get a microSD card, apparently.
December 7th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Don’t make the same mistake I did and accidentally buy a mini-SD card. I had no idea there were 2 miniaturized SD standards.
December 12th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
OK, I’ve got mine working now. I purchased a microSD card and a reader/writer for all SD formats from BestBuy. The actual reader I got is the “MobileMate SD” by SanDisk — pretty nifty. It’ll take all SD formats and it’s only marginally larger than a “thumb” drive.
Smack the card into the phone and tell the phone to format it. It’s under the Tools and Settings thing. It’ll setup the proper folders for you.
Smack the card into the reader and you can drop files into the “my_music” folder. Pop them back into your phone and they’re available. I tried it with both MP3 and WMA formats. Caution: MS defaults ripping of WMA into a locked format. If you ripped them in this manner then I highly doubt you’ll be able to play them on the phone.
If you want to make your own ringtone you can drop an MP3 (or WMA) into ‘ringers’ directory via the card reader — not through the phone. Disconnect the microSD reader from the system, shove the card back into the phone, connect it up via the USB cable, let BitPim find the phone (I’m on a Mac here — so I can’t really say how this will work with Windows but it should be easy) then pull data from the phone. The icon is in the upper left of the BitPim toolbar. Once that completes push data back to the phone (the icon just to the right of pull) and tell it to update the ringtones. Viola — there they are!
I like to snag sounds from Movie WAVs for my ringtones. Much better than paying $3.99 to Verizon to yank stuff from their limited selection if you ask me.
December 13th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Thanks!