Steve explains how to get your CDs into ultra-high-efficiency digital music files on your Eseries smartphone or communicator. He shows you how, using the AAC+ format, it is possible to pack an album into each 25MB of your expansion card at 'CD quality'.
Read on in the full article.
Well done gents! Will look forward to reading this properly and trying it out later today. Your efforts are much appreciated here. It will be interesting to see whether my already-ripped files in AAC can be used somehow or I have to do them all again!!
I guess that the wizards at OggPlay will read this, no doubt and release their 3rd Edition version!
Tim
Tim - this doesn't cover transcoding. Only going straight from the CD. However I'll cover transcoding (i.e. converting files) next week.
Excellent. Thanks Rafe. (I knew there'd be a posh word for it!)
timsalmon wrote:It will be interesting to see whether my already-ripped files in AAC can be used somehow or I have to do them all again!!
Tim, you need to be carefull with "transcoding" (I didn't know that was the word for it either!). By ripping your CD's to AAC you have effectively thrown away some of the information that was on the CD in order to get a smaller file size. This is Lossy encoding because you lost some data.
AAC+ is also a lossy encoding mechanism. If you transcode from AAC to AAC+ you are taking a file that has had information removed and you are removing even more information from it. You will end up with nice small files but the sound quality will be less than if you started with the original.
Of course, whether or not you can hear the difference (or care) is a matter of taste (and how good your headphones are).
Bassey: Thanks for that - I was aware of that payoff but hoping it wouldn't be too bad (or with my wonky hearing I wouldn't notice!) - I was just trying to save ripping all my 300 CDs again. Think I'll be more selective this time and eagerly await OggPlay! All OGG files waiting and ready to go!
Tim
Re: I was just trying to save ripping all my 300 CDs again
Best to rip your CDs into FLAC format (lossless), then you can transcode them in the future into any format without loss.
Never heard of it! That sounds like a great idea. I see CDex has a FLAC conversion option (at the bottom) [FLAC Encoder DLL] and defaults to Compression Level 8 (I guess 8 is most quality and 0 is least?). I see a busy evening ahead!
Thanks
Tim
FLAC is lossless compression, so any compression level gives you the same quality, the difference is encoding time. Decoding time is the same for all compression levels.
FLAC compressed music is still 1/3 to 1/2 of the original size, so don't get too excited about this format...
Music must be exceptionally hard to compress without loss, as nobody seems to be able to come up with something that makes really small files.
Excellent article, thanks. 6 albums in the space where previously I had 2. Now looking forward to the transcoding piece.
FLAC compressed music is still 1/3 to 1/2 of the original size, so don't get too excited about this format...
Hard drives are getting bigger and bigger so lossless formats are becoming more attractive. I might think about using FLAC in future, but at the moment all my music is in Ogg format. Vodafone are sending me an E60 so hopefully we should see a working S60V3 version of OggPlay soon.
Started to look at all this last night in more depth and it seems that the FLAC file became 6.5 bigger than a WMA but that the AAC+ file that I created using Steve's method created a file which was over twice the size of an aac which had been created by Nokia Music Manager. Though I guess it had been optimised by that. I shall do some more testing tonight.
Tim
Hi Guys,
What do you think of the audio output quality of our E-series phones? Did some comparison tests using a 160kbps mp3 file. I think the output of the E61 is lacking in bass and slightly muddy. I played the same file on a 3250 and the output has clearer highs and fuller bass. Granted, the 3250 is a music phone so it should sound really good (almost identical to my ipod), but did nokia used slightly lower spec audio decoder with the e-series? Or is it the firmware? :con?
Its not noticable with normal earphones, but when i hooked it up with my car stereo, im seriously missing the bass sound and somewhat irritated by the slightly muddy vocals. When i hooked up the 3250, it was pumping out solid, clear, and thumping music.
My old Compaq Ipaq 3900 has a much better sound output than the E61.
:con?
My personal experience is that 2 years old N7710 sound is much much better than E61.
Nokia N70 has better sound too (Nokia HS-23 headset; Nokia HS-3 headset; Dire Straits - News; Dire Straits - Where Do You Think You'r Going; Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms; Eagles - Hotel California live; Texas - White On Blonde LP; Texas - The Hush LP; all MP3s are 44kHz, 16bit, stereo).
Has anybody same experience??
I found some informations about E61 hardware, maybe someone will help me with my sound experience
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=11991&contentId=4670
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tsc2301.html
Yes, I can confirm all this. The E61 and E70's stereo audio output is far less impressive than that on the Nseries/3250. Is it possible that the latter use special audio hardware, whereas the Eseries are having to do more in software? Anyone know for sure?
(Setting the E61/E70's Music player's Equaliser function to 'Bass Boost' gets you part of the way back to a decent bass, though)
Steve
You don't need "special" hardware to play 44KHz 16bit pcm, which as far as I know is all these smartphones can do. The hardware is probably just a simple DAC (Digital to analogue converter) so it's almost impossible to get this wrong. There could be something wrong with the amplifier that drives the headphones though, so perhaps you have to use headphones that have the right impedance to get good results?
The bottom line is that if Nokia have screwed this up on the E60 as well I'm sending the thing back!
Do you know where can I find detailed hardware specification to E61?
I just know that TI OMAP1710 chip is used there.
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=11991&contentId=4670
But 1...
... the chip can be combined with 3 audio codecs
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tsc2301.html
But 2...
... the only difference betwen number of Analog-to-Digital codecs,
which have no impact to audio output
Is ot possible that nokia wanted to make some differenes between N series and the E series and there is some software reductions in playing MP3s?
entry wrote::con?
My personal experience is that 2 years old N7710 sound is much much better than E61.
Nokia N70 has better sound too (Nokia HS-23 headset; Nokia HS-3 headset; Dire Straits - News; Dire Straits - Where Do You Think You'r Going; Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms; Eagles - Hotel California live; Texas - White On Blonde LP; Texas - The Hush LP; all MP3s are 44kHz, 16bit, stereo).Has anybody same experience??
I found some informations about E61 hardware, maybe someone will help me with my sound experience
http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbuproductcontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=11991&contentId=4670
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tsc2301.html
Agree with You. And, sound like 7710, only in N91. I think, thar occurs not because of technical specifications, but for size... size of speakers!
7710 have a lot of space to have a big speaker. N91 also, and is a dedicated device.
N70 is also great, but not so great like N91... and 7710 (but I can compare now).
Also played d same file on a different player, Muzee. It skips every nw n then but i think dats just d unpolished Muzee player. However, i can confirm dat its output s identical to d built in Music Player, same lack of bass nd muddy output. So its not d software?
audio playback s such a basic functionality nwadays nd im a little dissappointed dat i could not completely enjoy listening to songs on my phone.
To nj7:
Sorry, but it is not about the internal speaker size (find my previous post).
I'm talking about Nokia HS-23 or Nokia HS-3 headsets.
Both sounds great with N7710 and N70.
I'm looking what's wrong with E61 (maybe whole E series), same headsets, same MP3 files, but very very different sound.
I'm dissapointed about E61 sound output, but if this is not important for you, the E61 is great peace.
And to flipspeed:
There can be still 2 reasons if the built-in Music player has the same output quality as Muzee player:
-both are using same OS features (DLLs, subsystem, ...)
and Nokia made some limitation against N series
-there's something bad on hardware side
I still have same question: is there anybody to explain that??
Steve,
Thanks for this tip. FYI, I tried copying the AAC music + playlists to my M600i. Normally with MP3 files, the Update Music option just takes a few seconds and then you are ready to go. With the AAC files, Update Music is VERY slow and it seems as though the M600i is opening each music file in turn to check that it can play it. Worse still, once Update Music is (finally) done, no albums are shown. Playlists ARE shown, but trying to use them gives an error. The only way to play the music is from the Tracks section, where the tracks cannot be grouped/played by album. So not ideal. I presume the S60v3 devices don't suffer from this problem?
Best regards,
Malcolm
www.freepoc.org
No, this sounds like a UIQ3 bug/problem. Rafe?
8-(
Steve