WMA files ripped by WMP10 sound muffled

[timmy]

Hi,

This is strange. I'm listening to music on my Dell laptop using Sennheiser MX500 earbuds, and found something strange last evening.

I have ripped my music with WMP10 using WMA 160Kbps, but when I compared the sound to the original CD, I found the WMA sound to be duller and with less treble.

Then I tried to re-rip using WMP 10 with MP3 192Kbps, and actually found these files sounding more like the original CD :!:

Are there any settings I have missed here, since I wouldn't expect Microsoft to include a MP3 encoder that is better than their WMA encoder...

/Timmy

[Jason Dunn]

Because your ears are different from my ears, and because I don't know the type of music you ripped, I suggest a simple test.

1) Pick three CDs from your collection, and rip one track from each CD (try to pick audio tracks that are different in style)

2) Rip each of them in 192 kbps MP3 and 192 kbps WMA

3) Listen and compare, then pick the best format :-)

There's no hard and fast rule about which audio format is the BEST - it's highly dependant on the variables that change with each person. Let us know the results. :-)

[timmy]

Hi again,

Now I have done some more research... Last night I encoded three different songs which I chose from different genres to get a better "dynamic range" to compare with.

One rock song: Creedence Clearwater Revival-Up around the bend
One soul song: The Solution-She Messed up my mind (Can really recommend this CD if you like 60's soul)
One "soft" song: Eagles-Lyin' Eyes

I encoded them as:

* WAV 44KHz/16bit to use as reference.
* 192Kbps MP3
* 192Kbps WMA

Then I played them in WMP10 and found that in all cases the original WAV sounded crisp and the MP3 file a little muffled and the WMA even more muffled....
I'm not saying the compressed files sounded bad, they where just at a lower volume and sounded softer/muffled in some sense.

A while ago I bought a Creative MuVo Micro N200 with 512MB of memory, and bundled was Creative Media Source (BTW one of the uglier interfaces I have seen lately) which I installed to try out.
(I won't go into how Media Source worked in general, but it seems to do the job.)

However the point is that when I played the files in Media Source (both WAV, MP3 and WMA) the muffled sound was almost gone ! ! I tried over and over again with the same result. A very slight difference in volume between WAV and MP3/WMA was all. In this case I couldn't even tell the difference between WMA and MP3.

Then I tried Musicmatch as well, with the same result.

I also copied the files (apart from the WAV's) to my Muvo, and there was no difference I could tell between WMA and MP3......

Conclusion:

It seems that WMP10 is the "bad guy" in my test. I checked if the EQ or anything else was set, but no.

Why should WMP be different in playing files than Creative's SW or Musicmatch? :?:

Has anybody else noticed this ?

regs Timmy

[Jason Dunn]

Interesting, thanks for sharing! Out of curiosity, is Auto Volume Levelling turned on?

Go to NOW PLAYING > ENHANCEMENTS > SHOW ENHANCEMENTS then go to the CROSSFADING AND AUTO-VOLUME LEVELLING.

[timmy]

:oops: Yes... it is turned on :oops:

Is this turned on by default?

I have been banging my head about this for a while now and then it is as simple as that....

Just proves that it pays off asking the right questions in the right forums
:D

Thanks a lot ! I have regained confidence in WMP now.

regs Timmy

[updatexp.com]

Nice catch Jason!

Get that one a few times a month with supporting users online 8O

Regards

Marc Liron - Microsoft MVP
http://www.updatexp.com
http://www.podcasting-101.com
http://www.podcast-software.com