Hi,

I've just copied some albums in WAV format to the Beosound 5:

It works fine and the unit plays the uncompressed music like it should.

Now come's the big BUT:

How do I have to arrange the albums, folders and cover pictures correctly so that the Beosound 5 can see it?

Actually I have all WAV albums marked "unknown" album. They only show up under "albums" and not under "cover".

Is there any workaround to see the WAV albums with their name under the category "album"?

Thanks for any help!

what i've been told by the dealer is DON'T use WAV because you can't tag album info and cover-art.

i've been told to use Wndows Media player to rip music and select "Windows media lossless" - then download beoplayer and get it to scan your harddrive - then beoplayer will transfer music to the Bs5...

Yes, the missing "tagging" feature is realy bad. The cover art problem could be solved by naming the pictures exactly like the corresponding folder.

I don't like proprietary formats like Windows media losless ... so I choosed MP3 320kbit/s and WAV.

WAV would be the best solution but the missing tags are a real problem. Perhaps somebody can solve this?

Keith? KEITH? Where are you? ;-) 

As much as I dislike proprietary formats, I think you're shooting yourself in the foot by not using WMP in this case.  Why spend $6K on a music player and then use lossy compression or waste space and time with the inconvience of WAV. 

For the longest time, I wouldn't use Apple lossless for reasons of principal (and wanting to avoid "lock in"), but then I got over it (especially when I found that iTunes could convert Apple lossless to AIFF) ...  Since you can find tools that convert from WMP to WAV (hence, your music is not entirely locked into microsoft), why bother with WAV?

I've spent the last few days burning about 100 of my most very favorite CDs in WMA in preparation for my BS5 delivery (hopefully next week).  I found this easier than Apple lossless to AIFF to WMA.  The remaining couple 100 CDs are encoded at 256-ish mp3 which I will re-rip if I find that their sound quality bothers me.  I do have some LPs saved a AIFF or Apple lossless that I'm going to have to figure out how to convert, but luckily, no more than 20...

Stan

WAV will be my "masterdatabase" with the uncompressed audio.

It sounds great on my BS5 but it is uncomfortable. MP3 at 320kbit/s sounds fine for modern electronic music but not for classic, rock etc.
There you can hear a difference and it is missing some detail and "punch".

Perhaps I will try out WMA Losless even if I dislike it ... ;-)

but if I can solve the tagging/cover problem I will stay with WAV as this is a 1:1 copy of my original CD.

There is no audible difference between a wav file and any lossless version (or else they wouldn't be lossless) - it has been proven many times. There is no valid reason to store data in wav format other than aversion to a particular format(s) because of non-musical reasons.

I certainly wouldn't constrain the abilities of a new system by forcing upon it a baddly tagged music collection just so that I could store the music in wav format.

Which mediaplayer to choose for Windows, Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 or 11?

And another dumb question: Is it named "WMA losless" in the player? I'm asking because on the Microsoft site the codecs are named "WMA 9 losless, WMA 10 professional" etc.

Which one to choose for best quality?

 

I would go for WMP11. The codecs will be installed at the same time.

As to which codec to use, the MS site (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/codecs/audio.aspx) says:

"Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless

The audio quality of content that is compressed using this codec is the best of all Windows Media Audio codecs. It creates a bit-for-bit duplicate of the original audio file so that no data is lost, which makes it ideal for archiving content masters."

I think this pretty much sums it up:  "bit for bit", "no data lost", "ideal for archiving"

Althought WMA 10 Pro's name might make it sound better, according to MS, it is not.  From the descriptions I read, it seems more geared toward multi-channel audio (i..e 5.1, 7.1).

Stan

Ok, I'll give it a try.

Will the Beosound 5 read and play the files when I convert them from WAV to WMA losless with WMP 11?

I hope :-) 

I believe it should (not being an owner), as it was the original format of choice for the BM5.

Hi,

so, I've just installed the WMP 11 and determined that it can NOT convert audio files ... you have to rip them only from a CD.

Unbelievable ... I don't want to re-rip the CDs ... I just want to convert and tag the WAV files to WMA losless.

any hints?

All the audio (and video) converters you want:

http://www.ojosoft.com/audio-converters/index.html

Karel.

Merci!