IRiver WAV to MP3 Help!

LeftLane · 25 March 2004

Hi everyone!

I have a technophobe question.

I bought my wife an IRiver MP3 player for her birthday (to help Jonathan with his NSX), and I'm having some trouble. I have copied all of our CDs onto our PC, and they are in wav. format, which looks to me to be very large for each song. When I followed the IRiver instructions to download our music folder onto the player, I got a message of insufficient memory after 2 songs!

Do I need to convert all the wav files to MP3? The player supports both formats, but I can't figure out why it is out of memory when the free space indicator seems full. If I need to convert, how do I do it?

Are all the CD tracks protected from converting?

I don't know jack, so any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Todd

CORRECTION: The IRiver player supports MP3 and WMA, not wav. - that's probably the source of my problems. So.....how in the world do I convert all of our wav files to MP3 conveniently and quickly?

Thanks!!

matteni · 25 March 2004

I use the free www.WinAmp.com player and the free MP3 plug-in writer (search ZiffDavis at www.hotfiles.com ).

Very easy to use and free. Unlike the bundled player with XP - it is not as bloated and has many very cool plug-ins.

PHOEN$X · 25 March 2004

There's some great info in this thread. I recommend Exact Audio Copy and LAME.

NeoNSX · 25 March 2004

LeftLane : i ditto PhoeN$X's recommendations. This is how you get quality.

Here's a little tip i use for my iRiver when i'm in a hurry -- use Windows Media Player 9 to rip & encode your CD's to .WMA.
I hate to admit it, but .WMA gives slightly better filesizes to MP3. And WMP9 will retrieve the track names off the net so you won't have to type them in. It's very quick and relatively fool-proof (just set the bitrate under TOOLS/OPTIONS/COPYMUSIC, then all you'll need to do is hit a "copy music" button and watch it rip/encode)

LeftLane · 29 March 2004

Thanks everyone for your help....now let me ask a follow up question.

When I originally copied all of our CDs onto our PC, I used MusicMatch, and all the files copied as wav. files. Now, in order to switch these to WMA or MP3, will I need to go through the whole process again, or is there some way to transfer these files into one of the above mentioned programs and convert them all at the same time (consecutively)?

I'm hoping I don't have to sit there and feed all the CDs in again in order to have the files compresses correctly. Please keep in mind that I suck on computers, so even pulling up Kelvin's LAME link scared me when I saw what it looked like.

All I'm trying to do is load some songs into this new IRiver player for my wife....of course, I thought it would be much easier than this.

Thanks!

Todd

PHOEN$X · 30 March 2004

LeftLane said:
When I originally copied all of our CDs onto our PC, I used MusicMatch, and all the files copied as wav. files. Now, in order to switch these to WMA or MP3, will I need to go through the whole process again, or is there some way to transfer these files into one of the above mentioned programs and convert them all at the same time (consecutively)?

Once you have installed and configured Exact Audio Copy & LAME, there's an option to encode .WAV files to MP3s (assuming the .WAV files are still on your PC). It's in one of the pulldown menus in Exact Audio Copy, you just have to point it to the directory where the .WAV files are stored, and fire away!

Good luck.

jlindy · 30 March 2004

Doesn't WMA although smaller in size, sound inferior to mp3?

PHOEN$X · 30 March 2004

It's all subjective, but WMA is generally considered superior to MP3 at lower bit rates:

http://www.mp3-tech.org/tests/wma9/
http://ekei.com/audio/

At higher rates (128kbps+) they're pretty comparable. Personally I prefer MP3 because it's more widely accepted (and not controlled by M$), but only your ears can be the judge.

LeftLane · 5 April 2004

OK - I downloaded EAC and LAME, then compressed all of my wav files to MP3. I then went into the IRiver software to download all of the music onto the player in MP3 format.

However, I ran out of memory after 21 songs! This is a 128 mb player that says will play 4 hours of music, yet I get about 1 1/2 hours. So what is up?

Here is the compression info from EAC that I used:

Bitrate = 192 kbit/s
High Quality
Max VBR rate = 320 kbit/s

Do I now go back and change the compression info to 128 kbit/s and VBR to 256 kbit/s? I have no idea what any of this means - I just want to get the damn music onto the player.

Thanks!

Todd

NeoNSX · 5 April 2004

Todd, you'll have to compress those files a bit more. Use 96Kbit if you want maximum space (without sacrificing quality) or 128Kbit if you want quality. Even if you're using VBR, keep the maximum bitrate to 128Kbit.

I have a 128MB iRiver too, and when i use 192Kbit MP3's i can only fit about the same amount of music. The price we pay for having 20+ hours battery time.

LeftLane · 5 April 2004

Thanks Neo - I decompressed all of our files, then compressed them again to 128 kbits/s, and it helped, but not much. I was able to get about 26 songs or so.....I guess now I'm wondering if I should have gone with much more memory rather than saving a few bucks.

Is this IRiver player upgradeable with more memory or will I need to buy a different unit to store more songs?

Now I know why the 40 GB IPod is so popular - I could load every song I have on that sucker. Maybe I'll try that next....

Thanks! At least I know I did it right this time!

Todd

Jonathan · 5 April 2004

For around $100, a 128MB flash player is about the best you can do on the compressed music front, aside from a CD/MP3/WMA portable.

It really depends on what you are doing with the player, but if you are working out with it, or using it where there is a reasonable amount of ambient noise (car, bus, subway, outdoors, etc.) then 64kbps WMA files will sound fine to you, unless you are a golden ear.

If you want lots of songs in the GB range, you need a drive of some sort, and the opening cost will be around $250-$350 for up to 20GB (still keeping the player reasonably small), and up over $400 for 40GB.

Use Windows Media Player and encode a favorite song at WMA 64kbps and 192kbps and stick them on the player, then see if you can tell the difference during normal use, if not, stick with 64kbps for your portable player (it may mean keeping multiple versions of some tracks but it can double, or even triple your effective storage space on devices).

JS

O-Ace · 5 April 2004

Jonathan...just wanted to say Thanks for the hookup on the MP3 players. I've ordered a couple from your site!

-Awais

NsXMas · 5 April 2004

Thanks Jonathan.

OT question -
Is iRiver coming out with any multi-media players - ie video players? I played around with the Archos version in the store. I'm not sure if playing video on such a small screen is a good thing. But I'm wondering if iRiver wants to go into that market.

NsXMas · 5 April 2004

O-Ace said:
Jonathan...just wanted to say Thanks for the hookup on the MP3 players. I've ordered a couple from your site!

-Awais

Agreed! The iRivers appear to be the best PC based media players. I like their products and the iTunes the best.

Jonathan · 6 April 2004

NsXMas said:
Thanks Jonathan.

OT question -
Is iRiver coming out with any multi-media players - ie video players? I played around with the Archos version in the store. I'm not sure if playing video on such a small screen is a good thing. But I'm wondering if iRiver wants to go into that market.

We are. No official information quite yet (specs, pricing, availability...), but we showed some of the future designs at CES this year, and are also publicly involved in the new 'Portable Media Center' initiative with Microsoft to bring a full multimedia experience in to the portable arena.

Actually, this should be quite the category for the car. I plan on making a dock setup with displays in the back of my H2 so people can select from dozens of movies to watch and never have to take another DVD into the car again.

Also for travelling, they can't be beat since the battery really smokes a laptop, not to mention the size, and again the movie selection. Most of the new devices will also allow synching with media center type PCs to archive TV content, much like a TiVO, allowing you to take any show content you like to watch on your device with you wherever you go.

More on these soon, I will post again once they are set to launch.

JS

jlindy · 7 April 2004

NeoNSX said:
Todd, you'll have to compress those files a bit more. Use 96Kbit if you want maximum space (without sacrificing quality) or 128Kbit if you want quality. Even if you're using VBR, keep the maximum bitrate to 128Kbit.

I have a 128MB iRiver too, and when i use 192Kbit MP3's i can only fit about the same amount of music. The price we pay for having 20+ hours battery time.

I don't know why, but I have only been getting about 1.5-3 hours before all bars are gone. I thought it was because I bought some cheap Walgreens batteries, but even the rechargeable Energizers are doing the same.

Jonathan · 7 April 2004

jlindy said:
I don't know why, but I have only been getting about 1.5-3 hours before all bars are gone. I thought it was because I bought some cheap Walgreens batteries, but even the rechargeable Energizers are doing the same.

Is it one of our flash players? Make sure your backlight settings are set to like 1-3 seconds (it will light up when you press a button and stay lit without activity for whatever time you set it for). If the backlight is staying on for extended periods it will kill battery life like crazy. Otherwise you should get from 20-25 hours on a AA depending on which player you have, without exception. I have never seen battery life below 20 hours on our flash players unless the backlight is set to stay on for a long time.

If you still experience that, drop our customer support team an email: [email protected]

JS

jlindy · 7 April 2004

Jonathan said:
Is it one of our flash players? Make sure your backlight settings are set to like 1-3 seconds (it will light up when you press a button and stay lit without activity for whatever time you set it for). If the backlight is staying on for extended periods it will kill battery life like crazy. Otherwise you should get from 20-25 hours on a AA depending on which player you have, without exception. I have never seen battery life below 20 hours on our flash players unless the backlight is set to stay on for a long time.

If you still experience that, drop our customer support team an email: [email protected]

JS

Yes, it is the IRiver 128 MB newer style (380T I believe?) I don't think that it is the flash player, but probably bad luck with batteries. I will check the back light settings too and let you know if the problem persists. Thanks.

LeftLane · 7 April 2004

Jonathan:

Quick question before I head back to Best Buy....the included earphones with my IRiver 128 mb player are of unequal lengths, and are not adjustable. Is there a reason why the cord leading to one earbud would be 4 times longer than the other? I look like a moron with the headphones dangling......maybe I just got a bad set?

Thanks,

Todd

lemansnsx · 7 April 2004

LeftLane said:
Jonathan:

Quick question before I head back to Best Buy....the included earphones with my IRiver 128 mb player are of unequal lengths, and are not adjustable. Is there a reason why the cord leading to one earbud would be 4 times longer than the other? I look like a moron with the headphones dangling......maybe I just got a bad set?

Thanks,

Todd

All of my various brands of earbuds are like that. I assumed that it was designed that way to pass one behind the neck.

Jonathan · 8 April 2004

lemansnsx said:
All of my various brands of earbuds are like that. I assumed that it was designed that way to pass one behind the neck.

That is exactly right, the longest cord goes behind your head to avoid having cables dangling in front of you.

LeftLane · 8 April 2004

D'oh!!!!

Please remember that I am a self-described technophobe....add to that I'm an idiot as well.

IRiver WAV to MP3 Help!

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