Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Paraliminals, Paraliminal Resets, Paraliminal Walkabouts, Natural Brilliance, Sonic Access Converting to MP3

I've done a fair amount of research into this topic since I learned the hard way that not all mp3 players can play lossless formats and some can only play certain kinds of lossless formats. Besides wav as mentioned above, there is wma lossless, flac, monkey's audio, and for mac users: apple lossless (alac) and aiff. wma lossless, flac, monkey's audio (APE) and alac do compress the files somewhat (helpful in saving space) which in my understanding is ok because the files are still lossless. Wav and aiff are uncompressed which means even larger file sizes. So the first step is to check if your mp3 player supports lossless formats and which kind.

It is possible to convert one lossless format to another but you can't convert mp3 to lossless (since the info is already lost)- you have to rerip the cds.

The other thing to note is that current bluetooth stereo headphones do not support lossless audio streaming, but there is a lossless bluetooth codec (SoundAboutLossless) in the works.

Windows media player supports ripping to wma lossless and wav and works as described above. However it does like to "convert" lossless files when syncing - so I prefer transferring lossless files directly to avoid the possibility that windows media player is converting them to a lossy format.

I use foobar2000 to create flac files for my sansa clip (which doesn't support lossless wma or wav). I did need to download a flac encoder as well to get it to do this. It can both rip to flac and convert wav and wma lossless to flac. (It does a lot of other formats too - which I have not yet explored.)

Itunes can rip to alac and aiff - but not all ipods support those formats.

I just wanted to share what I've learned - since I was disappointed to find that the mp3 player I bought primarily to listen to my binaural beat CDs (which require a lossless format) didn't support lossless.

Thanks for the information. It is very usefull. I have a 4th generation iPod, so I am fine with wav format, even if files are big.

I'm glad you found it helpful.

I've had good success with wav as well on my cell phone which has windows media player. Although I forgot to mention above, that just because a mp3 player states that it plays wav, doesn't mean it can play lossless wav files. That was were I made my mistake with my first player which could play wav (and recorded to wav), but couldn't play lossless wav files which play at at kbps rate that was too high for the player.

I thought wav is always lossless. So how do you know the MP3 player does not play lossless. I believe my 4th Generation iPod does.

Wav files are complicated. I’m not sure I understand all the finer details but basically wav is a container for data that can be encoded by different codecs including both lossless codecs and lossy codecs. Most commonly when you rip music into lossless wav, the LPCM codec is used and I think most music wav files are in that format. However wav does also support compressed audio so just because a file is a wav file doesn't necessarily mean it is lossless. It depends on how the data inside was encoded.

My ripped lossless wav files play at a rate of 1411 kbs. The player I had supported a maximum of 320kbs – so on direct transfer of the file – at best it just wouldn’t play and at worst the device hangs on building the file list. If I sync using Windows Media Player (WMP), wav files get converted and will play at 320kbs. However, the conversion process involves dropping data (if necessary) to get a file in a format playable by the device. I don’t think the converted lossless file is truly lossless anymore. WMP also converts wma lossless when syncing which then also play at 320kbs. I have been transferring files to my cell phone using file manager to avoid this conversion process, but I just figured out that one can turn off conversion during syncing in WMP (at least for some devices) and have managed to sync a wma lossless file without it being converted.

I know the 4th generation ipods support lossless music playing. But I don’t know enough about ipods or itunes to know how they handle syncing and whether they do anything to lossless wav files in the process. You can compare synced file sizes and bit rates to see if they are lower than the original file – to get a sense if the files have been changed. If they automatically convert files – perhaps there is a way of turning that off.

Thank you for the detailed explanation.