Is PPC audio as good as from a Discman?

[humayunl]

I have been reading a lot of discussions about 'PPC VS Ipod' for audio.

People have their preferences for each because of various reasons such as brand loyalty, device size, form factor, storage space etc. etc. But no one has so far mentioned the sound quality. Or maybe I just missed it.

I have never owned an Ipod (or any Mac device for that matter) but I know Apple has good reputation in multimedia so I assume the Ipod sounds good. That and the faxt that it has to because its a specialized audio player unlike the PPC which is a relatively general purpose 'digital assistant'.

I love music and listen to it on my PPC (XDA II). previously used to carry a discman aruond for that purpose. I wont talk about the built in speakers cause they can only be SO good. However with headphones the PPC music doesnt sound as great as my discman.

I guess I am a little more critical of sound quality becuase it does matter to me and I do notice even subtle difference in the quality of audio. Things my wife may not even notice (being in a song or notbeing a song), I will notice when played on different players.

So my question is, i know everyone has their preferences with respect to music devices, but has anyone gotten audio to sound as good on a pocket pc, as you can on a good discman? or are my MP3s just not encoded with enough quality (i doubt 256Kb should be considered insufficient). or are my headphones (default XDA II) crappy? or is there another format (WMA) thats better for high quality audio compared to MP3?

am I missing something? cause i dont want to compromize on the quality of my audio.

[bikeman]

Loyal Microsofties, don't flame me. I can only post what I know. I use Ogg files (I don't download songs, I only rip them from my own CDs) encoded at a high quality level. A typical song comes in at about 5-7 MB. I play these on my Dell X5 using Pocket Player (which has an equalizer that works with Ogg). I also use expensive Sony headphones which cover the entire ear. The sound is outstanding. :D I have heard parts of songs that I never noticed before (that's a good thing). I think that the Pocket PC is capable of just as high fidelity as any MP3 player - it is all in the encoding and the headphones.

[Sven Johannsen]

Couldn't possibly flame anyone when it comes to audio perceptions. Everyone is so different, that there is really no way to compare in a forum thread. Even using specialized test equipment that can get scientific numbers for harmonic distortion, frequency response and all manner of hoohah, doesn't guarantee one thing will sound better than another to everyone.

You might try encoding in wma at 256K since that is what you are using now. File size should be comparable. (The marketing is that 128K wma sounds as good as 256K mp3, not that the file size at the same bit rate is smaller). Do re-rip into wma though, don't try to transcode. Beats me if you'll hear a difference, or if it will be better. That's pretty subjective.

For a personal test, take a favorite song and rip into mp3, wma, ogg, at comparable bit rates and see what you like. I have no doubt you can find something that pleases you as much as your discman.

I would recommend trying different earphones or headphones. Spared no expense is not a phrase that comes to mind on any of the included earbuds. Tried the discman earphones on the XDA?

[humayunl]

Havent tried the discman headphones with the XDA II because the headphone jack is proprietary. i have to get an adapter thingy first. I am sure it will make a noticeable difference.

I will also try the WMA and other format experiment. Thanks for the tips.

[Andy Whiteford]

With a high enough bitrate the PPC should sound at least as good as the discman, in fact it many even sound better depending on the quality of the components in each device. If you want good quality sound on your PPC then use good quality headphones and a high bit rate file such as 192kbit WMA or higher. The quality should be on a par with a discman for the majority of music for most people. You can use other codecs if you prefer, I personally use WMS since Media Player supports it and it is a very good codec in general. Use 320 kbit MP3 or higher or 192kbit OGG or higher for high quality results.
For the very best sound then there is an option for lossless compression with WMA for example which will rip an exact duplicate of the original track however this will result in much bigger file sizes but as stated above may very well sound better than the discman.
Everyone has their own preferences of codec and filesize to quality ratio - the best option is trial and error.

[humayunl]

I tried GSPlayer and liked it. Mainly because I like the clean interface and also I can use the equalizer to adjust the sound. The downside is that I can only play MP3 and not WMA on it.

Is there a WMA codec for GSPlayer? or is there an add-in Equalizer for Windows Media player?

I dont want to have more than one player. So ideally one player which has an equalizer, playlist support, clean interface codecs for the popular formats (MP3, WMA and Ogg) would be great.

[tobyrne]

I tried GSPlayer and liked it. Mainly because I like the clean interface and also I can use the equalizer to adjust the sound. The downside is that I can only play MP3 and not WMA on it.

Is there a WMA codec for GSPlayer? or is there an add-in Equalizer for Windows Media player?

I dont want to have more than one player. So ideally one player which has an equalizer, playlist support, clean interface codecs for the popular formats (MP3, WMA and Ogg) would be great.

PocketMusic Bundle (http://www.pocketmind.com/pmfp.htm) is probably what you're looking for. It's a very nice program, simple interface and quite powerful. PPCT reviewed it a little while ago, I suggest you have a read (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,34424).

Only downside is that the bundle is not free :( Goes for around 20$. They do have a freeware version, but the latter does not support OGG or WMA formats.

Pocket Player (http://www.conduits.com/ce/player/) is another nifty program. They offer a 30 day trial as well.

Personally, I use GSPlayer. Great, simple interface, very reliable and free :) You're right about WMA incompatilility, however this player does support OGG Vorbis.

[humayunl]

I also use GSplayer primarily now (only since a week). i like it. i guess for wma i can live with windows media player. dont wanna spend 20-30 on something i dont really HAVE TO... at least not right now.

thanks for the tips.

[uzetaab]

I hate to disagree with every one, but I will.
By it's nature, compressed audio is going to sound different to some people, no matter what.

Let me find a beginning. When CD first came out, they said that a CD contains every sound freq there is in music except for (I think it was) 4 high frequencies that the human ear can't hear. Despite this, some fanatical music listeners claimed that they could 'tell' that there were bits missing. That leads one to believe that there are some mutants out there with Superman's hearing.

Fast forward a few years to the advent of MP3s & other compressed audio formants. The main premise of this technology is to take out more of the frequencies that we supposedly cant hear to make the files smaller. Then you can fit more of them into things like PPCs & transfir them quicker. The problem of course is with those few people who can tell the difference. It's quite possible that your one of them.

Plus, if you turn down the bit rate enough, anyone can tell the difference. I'm NOT one of those people who has super hearing (I'm happy to listen to my MP3s at 40kb & do) but even I can tell the diference between 40kb & 128kb (but only just).

The black sheep of all this is lossless compression, but I find it hard to believe you could compress a music file much & NOT lose anything. I imagine there are people out there who CAN tell the difference.

I know it's a long post, but I do have a point. & that is that; YES there will be a difffernece between your discman & your PPC. Because your Discman is only missing 4 frequencies & your PPC will be missing a lot more.

Phew. Now onto the best solutions. They have allready been mentioned, but I will re-state them in order to be complete.

1) Get that adaptor so you can plug in some GOOD head phones. It won't cost you much but may take a little digging to find it. I consider it an essential accessory for any PPC, even if you decide in the end to switch back to your discman. This is the most important thing you have to do.

2) try all of those different music formats, at different compression rates, they will probably all sound different & you will just have to pick the one you like.

3)Just for kicks, include a un-compressed WAV file. That way you can know for sure wether the problem is with your device or your compression. I think there will be a difference, but not as dramatic as the compression.

4)try out a few different players with the same file, if you do have a good ear (which I suspect you do) you will probably see a difference between programs, again only a small one.

One last thing of note is that the Ipod will have the same limitations as a PPC with regards to sound loss through compression, with the exception that they use an almost unique file format called AAC. You never know, you may find that your fav one is AAC, but I don't think there is an AAC player for PPC. So you would need an Ipod for that & then you are back to the question of wether the device makes a difference to the sound as the Ipod only polays AAC.

[Andy Whiteford]

With regards to lossless, I have read a couple of reviews on desktop soundcards where they would take an original untouched file and also rip it to WMA lossless and compare both files electronically which will identify any changes or variations in the frequency range of both files - they both appeared identical which demonstrates that lossless really is lossless. This test was to measure how the soundcard perfomed with different sound codecs.

[Sven Johannsen]

Quick tutorial here. Digitization causes loss, period. Unless you are listening to tape or a record (remember those), the audio is digitized. That means the analog sound is chopped up in discrete values at a specific sample rate. A guy named Nyquist, said that mathematically you have to sample at a rate, twice that of the highest frequency component you want to reproduce. That's frequency component, not just frequency. A 4Khz sine wave (pure tone), has frequency components (harmonics) that are significant, well above 20Khz.

When you sample an audio signal you take samples at some rate. Lets use 8 thousand times a second, 8Khz. Each sample is encoded into some digital value. That could be 8 bits or 16, or 32. The more bits you have, the closer you get to the original value when you turn it back. The resultant digital stream is the product of the rate, times the resolution. 8Kz (8K samples per second) times 8 bit samples is 64Kb digitization. That incidentally is toll quality voice, which is what you get on your telephone.

If you are trying for music that has frequency componenets up to 20Kz (and theoretically we can't hear the ones above that) Nyquist says you have to sample at 40Khz minimum. If you use 8 bit samples you are talking 320Kb/s data. I would think that is granular enough and would think 16 bit would be recommended. That would yeild 640Kb/s. That's raw. A three minute song would be 180 secs times that, or 1843.2Mb or 230.4 MBytes. Your 512 SD card would hold 2-3 songs.

You've all used a zip program I'm sure. There are mathemagical ways you can manipulate bits to make the file smaller, and still be able to completely restore it. You have to be able to completely restore it, because if you are compressing an executable, you cannot afford to drop a bit here and there. Music encoding is the same in that you can compress the file in such a way that you can accurately reproduce the 1s and 0s you started with. With music though, you can get away with losing a bit here and there. The compression and restoration will tolerate a bit of loss. There are various methods of doing that compression and restoration, resulting in options such as MP3, Ogg, wma, just as there are different file compression techniques like zip, rar, lhz.

The key here is two fold. When you digitize analog values you will distort the sound. If you are doing 8 bit samples, you have 256 discrete values. if the analog sample falls at 181.5, tough, you get 181 or 182. Second, you get to come up with a compression scheme. To get it to where there is some significant benefit in size reduction, you have to accept some loss. The different techniques are...well...different. It kind of comes down to what sounds good to you, bumped against how much storage you have and want to commit. With the same size player, you may need to choose between 64K encoding and 100 songs, or 128K encoding and 50 songs.

Don't know why I wrote all this, guess I had nothing better to do this Thanksgiving morning. Hopefully it provided someone with a little more perspective on what's going on. You can apply the same thing to video BTW. Just use bigger numbers. :wink:

[dean_shan]

I'm an MP3 Junkie. I rip my music at 160 VBR. I do this because I had already amassed a large MP3 collection and because MP3s can be played on anything. No one ever makes an audio player that can't play MP3s (with the exception of Sony). Simple put, I can play my music on just about anything, even my watch (https://www.laks.com/page.php?lang=en&laks_s=off&name=future&art_id=97).

[uzetaab]

Thanks Sven, for clarafying. I knew I would be a little wrong. I was mostly working from info I picked up when I was about 10. That’s 16 years ago. I got the basic concept right though, that even CDs sound different.

Thanks again. I really appreciated the info.

Hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving.

[Janak Parekh]

If you are trying for music that has frequency componenets up to 20Kz (and theoretically we can't hear the ones above that) Nyquist says you have to sample at 40Khz minimum. If you use 8 bit samples you are talking 320Kb/s data. I would think that is granular enough and would think 16 bit would be recommended. That would yeild 640Kb/s. That's raw. A three minute song would be 180 secs times that, or 1843.2Mb or 230.4 MBytes. Your 512 SD card would hold 2-3 songs.
Almost, but you're off by approximately a factor of 4. ;)

<pedantic>
640Kb/s is kilobits per second, and besides it's mono. To translate to a stereo and kilobytes, you're talking 176KB/s for 44KHz, 16-bit, stereo audio. So your 512MB SD card would actually hold approximately 49.6 minutes of music, or 16.5 songs in uncompressed PCM (WAV). ;) Which makes sense, if you think about it -- an CD today stores about 70 minutes/700MB of uncompressed PCM audio.
</pedantic>

Compare that to 128Kb/s for compressed MP3/WMA/AAC/Ogg, and you'll notice there's a big difference in size overhead. Obviously something is being lost. It's in the trick of the codecs to try and only make sure stuff you don't hear is lost, but like any lossy compression, it's not quite perfect. However, some are better than others.

--janak

[Sven Johannsen]

Yea, you're right. I always forget that storage is typically specified in bytes, so that your 512MB SD card really stores 8 times that in bits. I deal more in transmission systems and deal with bits per second all the time.

I do want to point out that even CDs are digitized. They are discrete samples taken at some discrete rate. We haven't had analog storage and reproduction since records and tapes.

[kosmos]

My experience of 192 kbps mp3 from a ppc and half -decent Sony headphones/ear sockets just as good as portable CD player and far less hassle!

Now if only my 4GB Sandisk CF will arrive ...

[ctmagnus]

In my experience, my Pocket PC sounds much better than my Panasonic portable CD player.

[Darius Wey]

Personally, I still prefer encoding at VBR over SBR. :)

[allenalb]

Let me find a beginning. When CD first came out, they said that a CD contains every sound freq there is in music except for (I think it was) 4 high frequencies that the human ear can't hear. Despite this, some fanatical music listeners claimed that they could 'tell' that there were bits missing. That leads one to believe that there are some mutants out there with Superman's hearing.

it's not that people are mutants, it's that they don't realize that you can feel sound as well as hear it. this is one of the reasons some people still prefer vinyl. vinyl doesn't have the bit limitations that cd has. since it's an analogue format, it can record higher and lower frequencies than CD. they aren't frequencies you can hear exactly, but you can feel them in other ways, similar to how you can't smell pheremones, but they still influence your behaviour.

all that said, i use sony fontopid earbuds, and i think they sound great on my ipaq. i tend to lose them pretty fast. they absolutely blow everything else in the $10-20 range away.

i have seen reviews (can't remember where now) that showed comparisons between the toshiba e800 and an ipod, with the toshi winning. i have also seen reviews between the creative nomad zen and the ipod that said the zen blew the ipod away (higher s/n ratio or something).

i just wish someone would hurry up and write an pocket pc player that can play ape of flac files, so i can stop ripping my music twice :|

[scmok]

Concerning the quality of sound output, MP3 iPOD, or PPC are more or less the same at the phone jack level. That is, when you use more or less the same compression.

MP3, OGG, AAC and most other recent formats all use psychoacoustic encoding. In short, drop only information irrelevant to perceived sound. They almost give the same efect for bit rate of 300kb/sec or higher.

But the last step makes the biggest difference. I have not found a PPC with a 25mm speaker capable of producing any decent sound below 500Hz, which is of course a nightmare for music enjoyment. But most of the ear phones and some passive loudspeakers for desktop PC works quite well.

Using uncompressed format and buy BIG BIG memory won't bring you very far, but a few $ on a earphone makes a difference between hell and heaven.

[humayunl]

Any recommendations for a good earphone adapter so i can use normal headphones with my imate ?

[ctmagnus]

Any recommendations for a good earphone adapter so i can use normal headphones with my imate ?

I'd check out the productas for iMates listed here (http://www.pocketpctechs.com/Accessories.asp?type=audio).