Wave to WMA

[Juridisk]

I have just got Audacity and started transferring my vinyls to digital. In order to save space I wish to store a compressed form of the exported Wave files. I understand that Audacity do not support WMA and am therefore using dbpoweramp to convert the .wav files to .wma (9.2 lossless). Some questions:

1. Does “lossless” actually mean that the compressing algorithm has an inverse, that the process is reversible and that converters exist, enabling me to get back an exact copy of the original .wav file from the .wma file?

2. If not: are there other Windows accepted lossless formats for which the answer to 1. is yes?

3. Are there more effecient lossless compressions than the one offered by WMA 9.2?

4. Would I be better off with another converter than dbpoweramp?

[comcon]

1. Does “lossless” actually mean that the compressing algorithm has an inverse, that the process is reversible and that converters exist, enabling me to get back an exact copy of the original .wav file from the .wma file?

Yes

2. If not: are there other Windows accepted lossless formats for which the answer to 1. is yes?

Yes. FLAC, Shorten (SHN), Monkey's Audio (APE, to name a few. Here's a great comparison
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php ... comparison

I believe Beta 1.3 supports FLAC or soon will.

Personally... I've ripped over 1000 CDs using EAC, and used dbPowerAmp to convert them to WMA lossless to be stored on my Terabyte RAID server. I like the wide spread support for WMA.

The problem with all lossless codecs, is that there's only an approximate 50% reduction in file space from Standard CD Audio (44.1 kHz, 16 bit WAV).

3. Are there more effecient lossless compressions than the one offered by WMA 9.2?

Assuming you mean more minimum filespace, they're one of the best. There is very little difference as I stated above.

4. Would I be better off with another converter than dbpoweramp?

No Way Jose!! dbPowerAmp is incredible! There are other good ones out there... but I swear by dbPowerAmp

[steve]

My preference is for FLAC. The amount of compression is within about 5% of the best and it is pretty quick with good hardware and software support. It is also Open Source, so no worries about license restrictions and it is cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac and Linux). I only do conversions occasionally so I find that FlacDrop is a quick and convenient encoder.
http://www.rarewares.org/lossless.php