WMA Lossless?

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

I gather that WMA Lossless is not supported on the Fuze?  I can’t get any of mine to play.  I guess I just assumed that WMA support in general included WMA Lossless… I guess not!    Am I wrong?  Can anybody else get there’s to work? 

Message Edited by fzone46 on 08-31-2008 03:31 PM

2

According to the FUZE user’s manual:

Supports MP3, WAV, WMA, secure WMA, and audiobooks formats†.

 

It doesn’t specify WMA LOSSLESS format. I would assume that it does, but if you’re having problems with it, then maybe not? 

3

I’m also unable to get some lossless WMA files to play.

And that explains it, it doesn’t support lossless WMA. This is covered in another post.

Message Edited by amartincolby on 02-06-2009 01:35 AM

4

I believe WMA Lossless only plays on Zunes, so for non-Zune owners it would only be useful as an archival file. Being lossless would however let you transcode to a much smaller file(MP3, WMA, Vorbis) for use on a Sansa while preserving the lossless on your computer.

5

The Fuze uses FLAC for lossless playback.  This is different from the Microsoft version, but the F in FLAC stands for FREE.

The other wma variants are supported, except WMA Pro.

If you transfer your CDs to FLAC, you’re good to go.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

6

And being lossless, you can transfer WMA lossless straight to FLAC without having to re rip your CD’s.

7

You mean Convert WMA Lossless to FLAC.

Not sure how to do that, is it possible within WMP?

I dont think FLAC is natively supported yet in WMP without some plug ins.

8

Yes, use FLAC rather than wma.  I have more plugins in my current WiMP11 than I can count, it’s my PC Frankenstein.  I believe the player can play the FLAC files, but for ripping I think Media Monkeyis the hot ticket.  So far, I’ve been having fun with MM, and haven’t tried opening a FLAC file in WiMP11.

It’s Sansafix’s fault, he pointed me to MM.  Good stuff. 

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

9

Winamp’s Format Converter can convert back and forth between WMA Lossless and FLAC no problem.

Like the others, I’d also strongly recommend switching to FLAC, as it’s the most widly supported lossless format by a wide margin.  Switching to Winamp or MediaMonkey is also highly recommended.

My whole library is FLAC and I use Winamp for as my primary playback, library, burning & portable syncing tool.  I also occasionally use MediaMonkey for more advanced library mangement tasks.

10

I love MM, and lately Ive been playing with another manager called “Media Jukebox” (MJ). I found a recommendation on this forum for it so Im evaluating it.

MJ’s Advantages I have found:

  1. Analyze tracks calculates BPM , Intensity as well as Replay Gains. You can build smart playlists for the tempos you like.
    I think once the library has been “Analyzed” MM can make smartlists using BPM for criteria.

  2. Big advantage: MJ with Fuze: MTP can sync to external card! MM only does MTP on the internal volume currently. They need to fix this.

MJ is free so its worth a try. Im still using MM to rip my FLAC files at Max Compression setting.

Message Edited by sansafix on 02-09-2009 09:58 AM

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@sansafix wrote:
Im still using MM to rip my FLAC files at Max Compression setting.

If you’re interested in bit-perfect ripping, you should check out EAC (especially with the REACT add-on) or dBPoweramp.  For accurate ripping, these are pretty much the only options.

12

Can either MediaMokey or MediaJukebox sync with the Fuze?

I’d like to store everything in one place in a lossless format and still be able to sync to the Fuze. Also, MJ claims to be able to sync to iPod. Does it actually work? Do you need files need to be in the AIFF format for that to work?

This seems to be a convoluted process. Rip to FLAC with EAC for perfect repro, convert to WMA Lossless with WinAmp for playback in WM11, sync the FUZE with MM/MJ (maybe?), use MJ to sync with iPod (after converting to AIFF?), use Foobar2000 for playback if you want to bypass the crappy XP audio kernel and get good sound, and so on and so on. Whew!

You would think someone would streamline this process. Makes it hard to put together a PC based music server.

13

@spinjack wrote:

Can either MediaMokey or MediaJukebox sync with the Fuze?

 

I’d like to store everything in one place in a lossless format and still be able to sync to the Fuze. Also, MJ claims to be able to sync to iPod. Does it actually work? Do you need files need to be in the AIFF format for that to work?

 

This seems to be a convoluted process. Rip to FLAC with EAC for perfect repro, convert to WMA Lossless with WinAmp for playback in WM11, sync the FUZE with MM/MJ (maybe?), use MJ to sync with iPod (after converting to AIFF?), use Foobar2000 for playback if you want to bypass the crappy XP audio kernel and get good sound, and so on and so on. Whew!

 

You would think someone would streamline this process. Makes it hard to put together a PC based music server.

Both (along with Winamp) can sync the Fuze.  MSC mode would be the prefered USB mode.

Once question though, why would you want to “convert to WMA Lossless with WinAmp for playback in WM11”?  If you switch to MM, MJ, Winamp or Foobar, you’re never going to want to use WMP again.  And if you absolutely have to use WMP, you can get plugins to enable FLAC palyback in WMP.

Also, like Foobar, Winamp supports ASIO (via a plugin) for bit-perfect playback.

My setup is pretty simple:

  • EAC with the REACT mod for ripping to FLAC (handles album art, replaygain, etc.)
  • Winamp for all playback, playlisting, trancoding, syncing & burning
  • Tag & Rename for, suprisingly, tagging and renaming

Basically, you just need 3 good tools: a ripper, a library manager, and a tagger.  Lots of tools can do all three things to varying degrees, but for best-of-breed in each catagory you pretty much need three separate tools.