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Mp3 File Format Issue Split From Silly Humor Thread
f0dder:
I forgot, I have all of my .wav files l3enc encoded. It keeps them in the wav format, but they're crunched down using MPEG Layer-3. That's why it's so small. With XP, you can open it in the default Windows .snd player (sndrec32.exe) and select "Properties", then "Convert Now". Click the "Save As", give it a name, then "OK" and "OK" again and it will restore it back to a normal huge .wav. Sorry bout dat. :-[
-Tinman57 (February 01, 2013, 05:03 PM)
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Out of curiosity: why keep them in .wav instead of native .mp3? You lose ID3 tag support, and need specific codecs in order to play those .wavs, and not all software that can handle .wac supports chunks that aren't raw pcm audio.
Tinman57:
I forgot, I have all of my .wav files l3enc encoded. It keeps them in the wav format, but they're crunched down using MPEG Layer-3. That's why it's so small. With XP, you can open it in the default Windows .snd player (sndrec32.exe) and select "Properties", then "Convert Now". Click the "Save As", give it a name, then "OK" and "OK" again and it will restore it back to a normal huge .wav. Sorry bout dat. :-[
-Tinman57 (February 01, 2013, 05:03 PM)
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Out of curiosity: why keep them in .wav instead of native .mp3? You lose ID3 tag support, and need specific codecs in order to play those .wavs, and not all software that can handle .wac supports chunks that aren't raw pcm audio. -f0dder (February 02, 2013, 05:30 AM)
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The MPEG Layer-3 wav's operates much faster than .mp3 and don't require special players once installed, it decodes on the fly in windows. If I remember correctly, they also make much smaller files than .mp3's. I only use mp3 format for actual music files.
app103:
The MPEG Layer-3 wav's operates much faster than .mp3 and don't require special players once installed, it decodes on the fly in windows. If I remember correctly, they also make much smaller files than .mp3's. I only use mp3 format for actual music files.
-Tinman57 (February 02, 2013, 06:24 PM)
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Where did you get that info from? That sounds like something from an AOL wav trader chatroom, where they compress the crap out of sound files till they make a distinct "sucking" sound when played, and only because files over a certain size or with a different file extension will not play in AOL chatrooms. But they will tell you there is no difference in sound quality and what they do is better, because the file size is smaller.
They are wrong.
MPEG Layer-3 is essentially the same as MP3. They are not smaller files than MP3's unless they are compressed more, which doing that makes them lose more quality, just like you'd lose quality doing the same to an MP3.
The .wav file extension causes the file not to support ID tags, unless you use crapware that makes the files support it, in which case the files will become playable only in that crapware unless you change the file extension to .mp3.
Now I don't know what you mean by this part:
don't require special players once installed, it decodes on the fly in windows.
--- End quote ---
Do you mean you can use it for system sounds? That it works in Windows Media Player? Something else? What is "once installed"? What exactly is being installed?
The truth is that the file will only work for system sounds if the file size is under a certain threshold. I know this because I used to do this to make full song wav files to use as startup wavs on my old snail PC. I would select songs of a length near the same as how long it took for the system to startup and be ready for use, then set them as the startup wav, so I could use it as a timer. Turn the power on and walk away till the song was over. But if the file size was too big, it wouldn't play at all, and I'd have to compress it some more. Since the speakers on that PC were crap, it didn't matter how good the file sounded, it would end up sounding like crap any way. :D
The wav file you have will not automatically work in various players, just simply because it's a wav. In fact, it will probably work in more players if you simply rename the file, changing the .wav extension to .mp3. Try it and see how it works in all the players where it didn't before. And once you do, it will magically support ID tags, too.
Those three letters, W-A-V are sometimes magic, but sometimes the two letters M-P and the number 3 are even more magical. And in the case of your compressed wavs, that's the only difference between them and MP3's...the three characters after the dot. There is no magic in the file itself.
Tinman57:
Where did you get that info from? That sounds like something from an AOL wav trader chatroom, where they compress the crap out of sound files till they make a distinct "sucking" sound when played, and only because files over a certain size or with a different file extension will not play in AOL chatrooms. But they will tell you there is no difference in sound quality and what they do is better, because the file size is smaller.
They are wrong.
MPEG Layer-3 is essentially the same as MP3. They are not smaller files than MP3's unless they are compressed more, which doing that makes them lose more quality, just like you'd lose quality doing the same to an MP3.
The .wav file extension causes the file not to support ID tags, unless you use crapware that makes the files support it, in which case the files will become playable only in that crapware unless you change the file extension to .mp3.
Now I don't know what you mean by this part:
don't require special players once installed, it decodes on the fly in windows.
--- End quote ---
Do you mean you can use it for system sounds? That it works in Windows Media Player? Something else? What is "once installed"? What exactly is being installed?
The truth is that the file will only work for system sounds if the file size is under a certain threshold. I know this because I used to do this to make full song wav files to use as startup wavs on my old snail PC. I would select songs of a length near the same as how long it took for the system to startup and be ready for use, then set them as the startup wav, so I could use it as a timer. Turn the power on and walk away till the song was over. But if the file size was too big, it wouldn't play at all, and I'd have to compress it some more. Since the speakers on that PC were crap, it didn't matter how good the file sounded, it would end up sounding like crap any way. :D
The wav file you have will not automatically work in various players, just simply because it's a wav. In fact, it will probably work in more players if you simply rename the file, changing the .wav extension to .mp3. Try it and see how it works in all the players where it didn't before. And once you do, it will magically support ID tags, too.
Those three letters, W-A-V are sometimes magic, but sometimes the two letters M-P and the number 3 are even more magical. And in the case of your compressed wavs, that's the only difference between them and MP3's...the three characters after the dot. There is no magic in the file itself.
-app103 (February 02, 2013, 07:11 PM)
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It's actually different from a .mp3 and won't work if renamed to .mp3. Once the codec is installed you can use it with system sound files. Small sound files won't crunch down, which is true for just about any cruncher. You can choose what level of crunching so as to not take too much away, but for mono files it really don't make a difference.
Once the codec is installed, it works on anything that you have set your .wav files to be played with, whether that's Window Media Player, Windows Sound Player, or whatever. The L3enc works in the background when called upon by the system.
4wd:
It's actually different from a .mp3 and won't work if renamed to .mp3. Once the codec is installed you can use it with system sound files. Small sound files won't crunch down, which is true for just about any cruncher. You can choose what level of crunching so as to not take too much away, but for mono files it really don't make a difference.
Once the codec is installed, it works on anything that you have set your .wav files to be played with, whether that's Window Media Player, Windows Sound Player, or whatever. The L3enc works in the background when called upon by the system.
-Tinman57 (February 02, 2013, 07:32 PM)
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Sounds more like it's just MP3 encoded data within a WAV container, (ie. it has a header of RIFF) - so renaming it to .mp3 won't work because the MP3 header info required by a true MP3 decoder is missing and anything that can only handle valid WAV files won't work because the data will appear corrupt. Hence the need for a codec.
MPC-BE plays it without a problem.
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