# WMA Lossless



## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Anyone using WMA Lossless for media storage? 

I am looking for a lossless format and this seems to be about as good as any other. Ripping a CD in Widows Media Player is easy enough. I tried FLAC but it won't play in my car, while WMA will.


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## Mark Techer (Jan 17, 2008)

Hi Sonnie,

I had originally ripped all my CDs (about 400 of them) using the default settings on Window Media Player. I have since learned how to rip as lossless either WMA or WAV which is 1:1 of the original CD - ie LPCM. I am in the process or re-ripping them all. I will probably keep the low bit rate on the PC and store the lossless versions on an external hard drive.


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

So you are not compressing the file at all?

I ripped most of ours as .mp3 files... and a very few as .flac. I have a few remastered versions that sound superb that I want to rip as lossless so that I can combine them on one SD and USB. There may be only 25-30 CD's that I want this way, so size is not a real big deal. I have an 8GB SD card and even larger USB sticks.


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## Mark Techer (Jan 17, 2008)

Sonnie said:


> So you are not compressing the file at all?


As far as I can tell, no compression at all. According to the selection, this is true 1:1 cloning at the full 1411kbs of 16Bit (red book) CD. 



> I ripped most of ours as .mp3 files... and a very few as .flac. I have a few remastered versions that sound superb that I want to rip as lossless so that I can combine them on one SD and USB.
> 
> There may be only 25-30 CD's that I want this way, so size is not a real big deal. I have an 8GB SD card and even larger USB sticks.


I think I am in the same boat. The more I think about this, I doubt I will re-rip everything either. There is some stuff I simply don't listen to and other albums that play over and over. Those will be ripped at 1:1. If I get bored, then I guess over time, I'll do the rest. 

When I ripped my DVD-A discs (really wish I could rip my SACDs too), I used raw PCM and some songs are over 300MB. If I had used FLAC, the files were about half the size, but then I didn't have the ease of playback I have now. 

For all those that say MP3 sounds the same, I say take another listen. When I first started ripping CDs back in 08, it was for the convenience of not having to dig through 400 CDs to find the album I wanted to listen to. Given I have worked out my newer listening tastes, I want the best I can get from that.


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## Jungle Jack (Jul 28, 2009)

Hello,
I too use WMA Lossless for every CD I rip onto my PC. With Hard Drive space becoming so large for all but the cheapest PC's, there is not nearly as many concerns about storage space. The difference between it and MP3 is quite noticeable in my setup. I also use Apple's Lossless Codec, but I have been using the Windows Media Player far more.
J


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## gorb (Sep 5, 2010)

I prefer flac, but there's nothing really wrong with wma lossless other than the lack of support. Of course, it seems to be the opposite and working out in your case with your car and all. I'd change my car stereo before switching to wma lossless though


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## fuserules (Feb 10, 2012)

I have been using flac for a while, now have about 170 gig worth of CDs ripped.
I like the format, especially that it is not proprietary like WMA lossless and the apple lossless. I fear Microsoft or Apple will do something stupid. 
I think flac is now getting some momentum in devices for playback. Devices like Sonos, WD Live and SqueezeBox support the format. I think many new AVR many with USB/Network capability can play flac as well.
I have also transcoded to WMA Losses for my Windows Media Center but will likely find a better solution so I can only keep the FLAC files.
If your streaming the music, it can be decoded to Wav on the fly, while not taking up the same storage as wav files.


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