Words of wisdom from a-chen

Hi all folks,
A-chen is back, leaner and meaner.

More reviews comming your way on Mp3 players, Mobile phones, Pdas and Monitors.

For a start, i'll recommend a software for you loyal blodgers (blog + readers)- dBPowerAmp converter. This free software allows you to convert between different music formats such as Ogg, Mp3, mp4, wma (windows media audio), etc. Why do i care about different music formats, you may ask. Well, the reason is simple- SPACE, SPACE and more SPACE. I'm partially deaf (i cannot hear insults and scoldings properly) and thus i do not care much about music quality, unlike kiddie who listens at nothing less than 160-192kbps. With limit capacity on my SD card (for mp3 playback), i chose to go down the evil path and convert my small collection of mp3 files to the evil format- WMA.

Normal mp3s downloaded from kazaa are encoded at a bit rate of 128kbps. WMA claims to be able to represent the same song at half the bit rate (64kbps) without any discernable difference in quality. Well, since converting to wma is free, i took the plunge and converted my songs to wma, and tested them on my laptop and mp3 player. On laptop, the wma files play ok, but when i increased the volume to 80% or more, the sounds became quite painful to bear with. On mp3 player, at normal listening volumes, its passable. I cannot really differentiate whether its mp3 or wma files that i'm playing.

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CONCLUSION- wma (64kbps) is quite ok as a substitute for regular 128kbps mp3 files. On my 256mb card, i can comfortably squeeze 100+ songs in there. The only problem is that i do not have 100+ songs in my collection. See, told you the collection is meagre, unlike loyal blog reader N.O.T.S.N.I.W (he reportedly checks my blog everyday for updates) who claims to have 7 CDs of mp3s.. RIAA, go catch him!!!!

Software of the week: dBPowerAmp
(4.5 stars out of 5)