Manage updates with the Download AppWindows Media Player
Excellent
Full user review
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"great player"
Pros
i love wmp, i use it 95 percent of the time. i find it less bloated the musicmatch, and it never gives me problems. i prefer it for music or movies, and contrary to some reviews it's not all that bloated. i prefer this to any other media player out there. i use realplayer when the need arises, but then i'm right back to wmp. since i have a dedicated drive for music files, i rip all music to windows media audio lossless. love that quality.
Cons
on a few cd's i own with "hidden" tracks, for instance tools undertow album, it doesn't give the information for track 69. but i've only encountered this on two cd's in my several hundred libray.
5 replies to this review
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as far as setting it to wma variable and it recordording some of it at a lower bitrate. you are correct. it will take into account how complex the music is when encoding it. now as to will you really hear a difference in sound quality? i use a top end sound card, a 1400 dollar integrated amp, and a pair of 1500 dollar bookshelf speakers on 300 dollar stands. and on 80 percent of music, the answer is mostly no. the d: drive on my machine is strictly for music, and is 500 gigs. so i use lossless audio. some music rips at over a meg, some at only 700 kps. i do notice a difference in stoundstage depth, and image stability over the lower bitrates also. other things i notice on good recordings is proper decay (especially on cymbals). not sure if you're a days of the new fan.... if you are, rip both enemy, and shelf in the room. once in lossless audio, and once in wma variable. if you hear no difference in the songs. listen to each about 10 times each. if you don't hear a difference, i would not bother. personally i do, quite a bit. tighter bass lines, better ability to discern the subtle differnces between what the two different guitars are playing, and the voice is slightly more natural. very subtle i admit, but worth the space on the the small amount of well recorded songs for me to leave it set to lossless. hope i've helped. if it matters to you, i believe wma variable ot be the second best way to rip music. compex music can take it beyond it's max for those brief perods of high demands. many will disagree, but i believe wma is superior to mp3
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I'm an audio junky like you, just got done ripping my whole CD collection onto my 400 GB external HD, but I was concerned with how much space I wanted to take up, so I opted for the WMA variable bit rate format. I ripped the CD's at a bit rate between 240 to 355 kbps using WMP11. Some CD's, however ended up with tracks between 128 and 200 kbps, mostly for latin music. My guess is that the computer felt these tracks did not need a high bit rate for the range of sounds that they produced...what do you think? AND, can you really notice a difference in audio quality between a 900 kbps song and a 300 kbps song?...I know that depends on the sound system, but even with the best sound system, can you really tell a difference?
I appreciate any insight you may have on this matter. And don't bother putting it in layman's terms, I'm well versed in the language of technology.
Thanks.
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you can only get 70 or more songs on a cd by birning them in an mp3 or wma format. you'll need either a cd player or dvd player that will play those formats. for a cd player that only recognizes audio cd's you're stuck with the limit you speak of. i strongly suggest you make the upgrade to wmp11, it is much better, but will take some getting used to. and yes wmp10 does have the option to rip to lossless audio. but it takes up much more room. click on options, then ripping, and there you select the quality of ripping. wmp11 while taking some getting used to, is far superior to wmp10. if you do have a cd player that will play mp3's keep in mind, you can squeeze more songs on the cd only by using a smaller bitrate, which lowers the quality. i recommend if you choose to rip to mp3 format, never rip at less than 192. lossless audio is very high quality but only shrinks the size of the original to about 300 megs. so you'd only get 30 -40 songs on a cd. ripping to an mp3 bitrate of 192 will enable you to burn about 80 songs on a cd. 128 bitrate will get you even more on a cd, but quality starts to suffer. hope i've helped.
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I forgot to mention - maybe "lossless" is just with WMP 11 (?) - I still have 10 and am reading reviews to see if I want to upgrade.
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Hi... I am wondering how you can get 69 songs on a c.d. when my maximum would be 21 (average 19, depending on how long the songs are). I knew someone who could get 70 on but don't know how they did it either.
While I'm here, I might ask how to find "audio lossless" - I haven't heard of that before. But some songs I rip are not the best quality, for sure.
Thanks for any help.
