Losslessly converting from wav?

  • Thread starter Thread starter FattMusiek
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FattMusiek

FattMusiek

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Does anyone convert their wavs to any other format to conserve space? Is losslessly converting even possible?

Wave for a reason, no?
 
No I dont convert my wave's to save space.
But I do burn the project (song) and waves as data onto a cd (s)
to free some space on my hardrives.

I know it technically shouldn't; but do you guys find when the hardrive you're booting off gets close to its storage maximum that the system slows down??? or is that just me?

Scott
 
FattMusiek said:
Is losslessly converting even possible?
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Well no... all you can do to a WAV is apply lossy data compression to reduce its size. That's why we have MP3 formats in the first place (size constraints).... but you sacrifice audio quality for size of data.
 
One thing you can do, which saves a little space, is to zip up your WAV files. Programs like WinZip will compress anything and lose nothing.

However with most wavs, your compression will probably be less than 10%.

Ed
 
Scott Mellish said:
I know it technically shouldn't; but do you guys find when the hardrive you're booting off gets close to its storage maximum that the system slows down??? or is that just me?
Click to expand...
As a default, Windows creates a swapfile, no matter how much memory you have in your computer and when your boot partition is almost full, the OS will try to find every free bit of hard drive space which will result in highly fragmented files.
If you have enough RAM installed (At least 512 for XP) you may consider disabling the swapfile.
A cleanup and defrag would be better though.
 
christiaan said:
If you have enough RAM installed (At least 512 for XP) you may consider disabling the swapfile.
A cleanup and defrag would be better though.
Click to expand...

I would recommend against ever turning off the OS swapfile. If your space is this low, you need to buy another hard drive.

Ed
 
Ed Dixon said:
I would recommend against ever turning off the OS swapfile. If your space is this low, you need to buy another hard drive.

Ed
Click to expand...
Not disagreeing here.
 
Ed Dixon said:
I would recommend against ever turning off the OS swapfile. If your space is this low, you need to buy another hard drive.

Ed
Click to expand...

true, when the system does reach a point where all the memory is all alocated the system yields a low memory warning message and there's a good chance you'll loose all the data you were working on to that point if and when the system freezes and needs a hard reboot...

it isn't pretty either... ;)
 
...all you can do to a WAV is apply lossy data compression to reduce its size.
Click to expand...

Not strictly true. WAVs do compress a bit with lossless schemes like ZIP and WinRAR. But it's only 10% or so as opposed to the more significant size reduction like you get from MP3, RealAudio, etc.
 
Well, yeah - but it's usually an insignificant amount with respect the overall size of a 24-bit project... and it's rare that you even get 10% - more like 3-4% (at least, so I've found...)
 
With 80-120Gb drives running so incredibly cheap these days ($100US or less if you watch the sales), it's insane to think about compression. GET A BIGGER DRIVE.

You should have 2 drives on your PC anyway, one for the OS & apps and the other just for data (you'll get more tracks in your projects if they are streaming off their own drive.)
 
TimOBrien said:
You should have 2 drives on your PC anyway, one for the OS & apps and the other just for data (you'll get more tracks in your projects if they are streaming off their own drive.)
Click to expand...
Often stated, strictly speaking true but really for a lot of homereccers pretty academic. A one-drive configuration is still good for dozens of tracks.

But this discussion is maybe something for a whole different thread..
 
TimOBrien said:
With 80-120Gb drives running so incredibly cheap these days ($100US or less if you watch the sales), it's insane to think about compression. GET A BIGGER DRIVE.

You should have 2 drives on your PC anyway, one for the OS & apps and the other just for data (you'll get more tracks in your projects if they are streaming off their own drive.)
Click to expand...

ditto that, less than a buck a gig now, newegg, wd/jb/80g, 78 bucks, free shipping....
 
Check out Monkey's Audio (Search Google for the website). It's free and I often get compression rates of up to 50%. It works on 24-bit files, and the best thing is that you can use a Winamp plug-in to decompress the files on the fly during playback. I do this for songs I've ripped from CDs (my CDs that I've purchased!) and older projects since I would have to decompress them to use them in my recording software. Oh, and it's completely lossless, like WinZIP, but designed for wav files. Check it out!

Blue Bear Sound said:
Well, yeah - but it's usually an insignificant amount with respect the overall size of a 24-bit project... and it's rare that you even get 10% - more like 3-4% (at least, so I've found...)
Click to expand...
 
Yep, Monkey audio and Shorten are both lossless audio compression tools. There is life besides MP3 you know. IT is not as spectacular, but 40-50% is possible.
 
Monkey and Cooledit (aka Audition)

There is an .flt plugin for cooledit that lets you use .ape files (created by monkey) natively both for reading and writing. It's available here: http://www.geocities.com/feedthedead/

Additionally there is FLAC (Free lossless Audio Codec I believe), I'm not sure if the FLAC plugin for cooledit is up to snuff though.
 
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