Editing & saving .wma files

[tvz]

I have an Olympus digital recorder, which actually makes pretty decent-sounding .wma recordings. When I download them and open with GoldWave, I can edit them, but when I go to save I find out that "no codec is available...or an error occurred." I can save them as .wav files, but of course they are then relatively humungous.

My question is, should I just use the disk space and save everything as regular .wav files, or would there be a good way to compress them, while essentially preserving the quality of the sound?

(If setting the attributes to MPEG or something else is the answer, which of the many settings would be appropriate for me to use?

THANKS!
Tom

(As you can maybe guess, I don't really know or understand much about this sort of thing.)

[DougDbug]

I think the WMA CODEC is supposed to be installed by default when you install Windows, or maybe when you install Windows Media Player. Do you have Windows Media Player?

Are you just clicking "save", or are you clicking "save as", and choosing WMA? ...I'm thinking maybe GoldWave/Windows can't save a WMA with the exact same attributes as the original file, and if you choose a setting from the drop-down list, it might work.

MP3 is probably an acceptable alternative. Any computer can play (decode) an MP3 file, but in order to encode (save-as) an MP3, you need to install the 3rd-party LAME MP3 Encoder.

If you notice a loss of quality when saving to MP3, try saving with a higher bitrate. This will give you better quality, (and a bigger file).

[tvz]

Thanks for the reply, Doug.

I do have Media Player, so I don't know why I don't seem to have this codec.

I get the same message whether I "save" or "save as".

As for MP3, I actually find that I can "save as" this format with GoldWave. However, the various attribute options are a bit overwhelming. I can experiment, but would you suggest a minimum for either the Hz or the kbs? And whether or not to use Layer-3 or Layer-3 ACM? Any of these variables that I can eliminate will make it more possible to figure out what settings I need for the other variables. (I mostly record voice and sounds of nature. I don't need tip-top professional quality, but would like for my recordings to sound good.

Thanks a lot for your thoughts.

-Tom

[DougDbug]

I'm not an MP3 expert, so you should probably wait for a better answer. And maybe somebody has a solution for the WMA issue...

I'm not sure what ACM is... It doesn't show-up as an option on my computer here at work. It's probably the LAME encoder... I don't have LAME installed on that system.

I use the following settings for "near CD quality":
44.1kHz, 16-bit, 192-244 kbps (and "joint stereo"... I think).

In your case, I'd start-out with the same sample rate (kHz) and bitrate (kbps) settings as your WMA file. I would use a bit-depth of 16-bits. (Assuming you know the properties of your WMA file.)

If your MP3 doesn't sound as good as the WMA, try increasing the bitrate (kbps). The file size is proportional to the bitrate. If you use the same bitrate as the WMA, the MP3 file will be the same size.

There will be no advantage to increasing the sample rate (kHz).

P.S.
There are other MP3 settings like Variable Bit Rate (VBR) and Average Bit Rate (ABR), Joint Stereo, etc. These really are not that important if you use a high-enough bitrate. These options are designed to get the most from given bitrate. These settings are only implrtant if you are trying to squeeze the maximum quality from the smallest file-size.

A brief explanation for the major settings -

Bitrate - This is the number of bits used to store one-second of sound (kbps = kilobits-per-second... 8 bits = 1 byte). MP3, WMA, etc. are lossy compression. Higher bitrates are less-lossy... More data is thrown-away at low bitrates.

Bit Depth This is the amplitude resolution. With 8-bits, a full-scale digital wave is made-up of 256 stair-steps. With 16-bits, it's made-up of 65,535 stair-steps. With low bit-depths you get "quantization noise", and limited dynamic range. (Any low-level waves that are below the "first-step" are lost completely.)

Sample Rate This is the time-resolution. It's the number of times per second that the wave height is measured & stored. The recorded audio frequency is limited to half of the sample rate, because in order to re-create the wave you need to measure the wave height at least once during the positive-half of the cycle and once during the negative-half of the cycle.

[tvz]

Thanks a million, Doug! You're suggestion worked very well, producing a good-sounding recording of about the same size as the .wma file--much smaller than the .wav files I've made.

Would I be correct in assuming that if I am going to do some editing, it might be best to make a .wav file; work w/ that; then save as .mp3 (in order to avoid repeated losses during the editing phase)?

Thanks again
Tom

[DewDude420]

If you're going to be making edits...don't save to mp3 till you make all your edits..it's bad enough you're going from one bad lossy codec to one that's only slightly better.

[GoldWave Inc.]

Resaving WMA files can be a problem if the file does not contain all the details necessary for GoldWave to automatically select the correct encoder/attributes. Using File | Save As and selecting different WMA attributes usually works (I'm surprised it didn't for you). For voice files, you'd select one of the "WMA Voice 9" attributes, if you want small files and quality is not important.

Chris