Sony Ericsson / Sony : Software, Firmware and Drivers : Making out more of your Memory Stick
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Hi Folks,
I'm already reading here since a couple of months, more precisely since I bought my K750i.
I've also read many more or less helpful threads about getting MP3s onto the Memory Stick.
Many users feel confortable with just copying their MP3s onto the MS in their original bitrate. Most also beleive that bitrates of 192kbs are giving them much more listening pleasure than 128kbs or less.
In these discussions a few considerations have been missed and I'd like to pass them over to those who, like me, want to get the optimum in sound quality vs. required memory space.
1. A lot has been written about Disc2Phone, being an easy to use ripper/transcoder. But it lacks in important options (no steps between 128k and 96k, no VBR support). Therefore you have to choose between higher quality (128k or above) and low quality (96k and below).
2. Nowhere was mentioned that the analogue part of the K750/W800's media player is rather limited in bandwidth. This includes also any small ear-headsets usually plugged into such phones. Therefore you'll hardly be able to tell apart a 128kbps recoding from a -let's say- 192kbps.
3. I found no comprehensive mention of VBR (Variable BitRate) encoded MP3, which are the most effective way to achieve the best quality/storage space ratio for such small devices. For those who don't know VBR: the encoder encodes each "frame" of the music stream in the optimal bitrate required at that particular point of the music signal. That means, silent parts or parts with no or little high frequency components can be encoded with a much lower bitrate. The resulting average bitrate is usually 20-40% lower than a CBR (Constant BitRate) encoding of the same quality.
I (for my personal taste of course) found out that the optimum way to encode MP3s for normal music is VBR set to max. bitrate 112kbps, min. bitrate 32kbps (LAME encoder with best quality setting). The resulting MP3s then have an average bitrate of 70-90kbps, while the resulting quality is 90% close to 128kbps. If you still prefer to have 128k quality, then set the max. bitrate to that and you'll still save 25-45% in storage space. And this touches the "quality ceiling" imposed by the phone's audio hardware/chipset anyways.
In the aftermath, this encoding practique allows me to store between 800-1200 songs on my 1GB MS with a still more than acceptable quality. Of course as long as you don't expect the same quality reproduction of high demanding classic music as you may have it on your home HiFi stereo equipment. But again, that won't be possible on a phone anyways.
I've found the Software "MediaCoder" (current version 0.3.5) being the most useful for my K750i, offering a lot of audio and video input formats (including MP3) and as many ouput formats (MP3 VBR/ABR using LAME Encoder). Also including reproduction of a folder structure on the target.
I hope this my first posting helps others making out more of their beloved K750/W800 etc.
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Posted: 2006-01-20 19:35:01
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Ok, just a clarification on the ADDA converters found on SE phones... they are BETTER than those found on ANY iPod... new or old.
The SE phones that have been found to have very good DSP/ADDA chips are the P-series (all), K750, S700, and all Walkman phones.
Yes, you can tell the difference between a 128 and 192... the DSP is good enough to go as high as 256kbps and you'll still notice. The shortcoming is NOT the phone, it's the headset that SE bundles it with.
Use quality earphones... AKG, Shure, Etymotic and the like... not any of the off-the-shelf stuff you find in Tower Records for $20
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Posted: 2006-01-20 19:47:58
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On 2006-01-20 19:47:58, jplacson wrote:
Ok, just a clarification on the ADDA converters found on SE phones... they are BETTER than those found on ANY iPod... new or old.
The SE phones that have been found to have very good DSP/ADDA chips are the P-series (all), K750, S700, and all Walkman phones.
Yes, you can tell the difference between a 128 and 192... the DSP is good enough to go as high as 256kbps and you'll still notice. The shortcoming is NOT the phone, it's the headset that SE bundles it with.
Use quality earphones... AKG, Shure, Etymotic and the like... not any of the off-the-shelf stuff you find in Tower Records for $20
Sorry but may be I was misleading: I wrote about the
analogue part, with that I meant what's coming after the DA-converter. As first you'll notice the limit of quality in the noise level which is by far higher than that of any pure MP3 player or even cheap portable CD player. Second I made a few measurements with 256k encoded reference signals in our lab and I found (at least with my phone, bought nov. 2005) that the signal begins dropping at 14.5kHz, falls out of the HiFi-DIN norm of -3dB at about 16kHz and finally drops dramtically at 17.8kHz. Therefore, whatever wonderful stuff the connected headphones could reproduce, this doesn't help much with what's coming out of the phone connector (W800 adapter in my case).
But after all... it's a phone, and the one with still the best Media Player hardware too. I just wanted to give some useful hints to the average users with average music and average quality expectations.
[ This Message was edited by: MP3Freak on 2006-01-24 16:50 ]
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Posted: 2006-01-20 20:34:55
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Well, I download the media coder (it crashed on the first "start" to convert...
).
Anyway... is there a way to make it create a different folder for a set of artists/albums, just to arrange it all at once to copy the file to the phone?
Thanks
(gonna try to encode again...)
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Posted: 2006-01-21 00:15:47
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On 2006-01-21 00:15:47, Dan_Aykroyd wrote:
Well, I download the media coder (it crashed on the first "start" to convert...
).
Strange, didn't have such issues yet. Did it work on subsequent attempts?
Quote:
Anyway... is there a way to make it create a different folder for a set of artists/albums, just to arrange it all at once to copy the file to the phone?
You may have MC reproduce the subfolder structure of the source folder also at the destination folder.
EDIT: Sorry, forgot: I encode directly to the virtual drive of the MS/Phone on USB.
[ This Message was edited by: MP3Freak on 2006-01-21 16:02 ]
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Posted: 2006-01-21 17:00:58
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Yes... it worked and, I'm also encoding to the phone directly.
How do you set to structure the folders the right way? I haven't tested it much, so if you can't give me an advance would be great; else I will have to play with it.
Thanks
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Posted: 2006-01-21 23:33:00
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On 2006-01-21 23:33:00, Dan_Aykroyd wrote:
How do you set to structure the folders the right way? I haven't tested it much, so if you can't give me an advance would be great; else I will have to play with it.
On The main window's toolbar click the "Settings" button and on the "Overall" tab navigate to the Tagging & Naming / Output Directory Structure setting. On the dropdownlist at the bottom of the settings dialog choose "Yes".
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Posted: 2006-01-22 12:08:20
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Really interested by mp3freak's posting and want to try the LAME VBR files as he suggested.
I found mediacoder to be fiendishly complicated and couldn't get it to do anything though!
Is there a SIMPLE LAME encoder for people who aren't particularly interested or techy and don't want to see all the options!?
Cheers.
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Posted: 2006-01-22 12:22:46
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use dbpoweramp and the aac format. aac files are the same quality at lower bitrates as MP3's, and therefore smaller than mp3. dbpoweramp gives you easy right click sound file conversion. AAC files use the mp4 extension, or m4a and m4p when using itunes.
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Posted: 2006-01-22 12:51:55
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Well, it wasn't working (the folder structure) because the MP3s I was testing with didn't have ID3... now I made that work, but:
- It randomly crashes and closes itself
- Some files appears as errors and don't get transcoded, without giving me any clue as what is the problem
Any ideas? Thanks.
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Posted: 2006-01-22 20:18:06
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