[Coco] [Color Computer] OT: WAV to WMA

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 20:12, Neil Morrison wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John R. Hogerhuis" <jhoger at pobox.com>
> 
> > Dare I ask the question, why one should want to?
> >
> > I dare... :-)
> 
> I want a format that is compact but can be used on a Windows computer
> without buying any more software. It's for cassette files for computers.
> 
> I found a separate encoder that seems to work well enough.
> 
> NM
> 

In that case, ogg encoders and decoders are Free, and there are plugins
for most desktop media players. There are a few portables on the market
that implement ogg and flac.  http://www.vorbis.com

Of course for maximum compatibility, there are free mp3 encoders, for
example http://lame.sourceforge.net/

The problem with wma is that there are no native encoders for the
rapidly approaching 10% of the desktops which run Linux, like mine. Why
lock out the Free World when mp3 is the ubiquitous format, and the ogg
alternative is Free?

For such a project, my recommendation is the following:

Make initial recordings to WAV, compress as FLAC on your hard drive, and
provide versions transcoded to MP3 and OGG to the public. The reason to
keep the originals in FLAC is to future-proof... every time you reencode
to a lossy format you lose information, and lossy formats come and go.
You should always encode from a lossless format.

-- John.