Will WD ever support this file type / is it possible to support this file type?
Is there a way to batch convert WMA lossless files to another lossless format that works - like WAV and retain the album / track info?
thanks mate - i think that will help! I just need to try and work out a way to add the album art if possible…
The software from my previous post has the ability to add cover arts and ID tags. 
I just had a play with it and i highlighted all the tracks in one folder then clicked properties and applied an album image to the entire set of tracks - seemed to work fine but need to test on the hub!!
Looking at the file size one of the original files was 29mb and the new one is 40mb… So adds about 30/40%!
May need a bigger hard drive if my collection carries on growing 
Depending what size cover art you use will increase the size of the audio file. For the hub a cover art of 300x300 (about 100k or less in size) is sufficient. I personally use 600x600 (about 200k) cover arts since I use iTunes and the iPod app on my iPad. On the hub, the cover arts are displayed in reduced quality, which is something that has been mentioned before.
badmem wrote:
Okay Tony, but both wma and FLAC use lossless COMPRESSION, so the files are not identical to the original. If you convert from something that is compressed to a different format that is compressed you will lose some quality.
That’s completely untrue. Lossless COMPRESSION means that, when UNCOMPRESSED, it’s returned back to and identical to the original.
MP3s, by comparison, when uncompressed are NOT identical to the original.
When media are compressed using a LOSSLESS codec, there is NO information lost in the process, and all information can be completely reconstructed back to its original state.
When media are compressed using a LOSSY codec, information is irretrivably discarded in exchange for higher compression ratios.
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TonyPh12345 wrote:
badmem wrote:
Okay Tony, but both wma and FLAC use lossless COMPRESSION, so the files are not identical to the original. If you convert from something that is compressed to a different format that is compressed you will lose some quality.
That’s completely untrue. Lossless COMPRESSION means that, when UNCOMPRESSED, it’s returned back to and identical to the original.
MP3s, by comparison, when uncompressed are NOT identical to the original.
When media are compressed using a LOSSLESS codec, there is NO information lost in the process, and all information can be completely reconstructed back to its original state.
When media are compressed using a LOSSY codec, information is irretrivably discarded in exchange for higher compression ratios.
I’ve never done lossless to lossless conversion, I’ve always started from uncompressed wav files. I’m interested in how the conversion works. Does the conversion software uncompress the wmaL file and then run it through the FLAC codec? Or does the conversion process run the compressed wmaL file through the FLAC codec?
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adsjruk wrote:
I just had a play with it and i highlighted all the tracks in one folder then clicked properties and applied an album image to the entire set of tracks - seemed to work fine but need to test on the hub!!
Looking at the file size one of the original files was 29mb and the new one is 40mb… So adds about 30/40%!
May need a bigger hard drive if my collection carries on growing
This is interesting. I’ve never had to this. So you converted from wmaL to FLAC and all of the cover art and tags were preserved? And the files sound the same as the wmaL files?
The price of storage is pretty cheap these days, so I rip all of my CDs to individual wav files. Then convert the files to FLAC and mp3. Then rip the CD to one big uncompressed wav file with a cue sheet. I use that as a backup that I can use to recreate the original CD. The FLAC files I play through the HUB and my AV system. The mp3 files I put on my iPod for when I’m traveling. I’m still in the process of ripping all of my CDs to hard disks and putting the physical CDs away.
This is interesting. I’ve never had to this. So you converted from wmaL to FLAC and all of the cover art and tags were preserved? And the files sound the same as the wmaL files?
The price of storage is pretty cheap these days, so I rip all of my CDs to individual wav files. Then convert the files to FLAC and mp3. Then rip the CD to one big uncompressed wav file with a cue sheet. I use that as a backup that I can use to recreate the original CD. The FLAC files I play through the HUB and my AV system. The mp3 files I put on my iPod for when I’m traveling. I’m still in the process of ripping all of my CDs to hard disks and putting the physical CDs away.
This is interesting. I’ve never had to this. So you converted from wmaL to FLAC and all of the cover art and tags were preserved? And the files sound the same as the wmaL files?
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Yeah I converted the WMA Lossless files with dBpoweramp into FLAC Lossless. The files are showing as using CD quality bitrates. The program also carried all the track data across. The only thing it doesn’t do is carry the album art, but you can simply highlight all the tracks in an album and edit the id-tag. You can select the album art you like online via the window that popups up and chose a good quality album cover and apply to all tracks.
To be fair though, album art isn’t that useful on the WD tv live hub as I can’t get it to show on the artist overview page (and to be fair prefer the list view due to my volume of artists) and then the only other places you see the album art is on the now playing, which is tiny - even on my 50" telly.
I haven’t had a chance to fully test the sound but it appears to be full quality lossless and so its going to be as good as it gets.
adsjruk wrote:
This is interesting. I’ve never had to this. So you converted from wmaL to FLAC and all of the cover art and tags were preserved? And the files sound the same as the wmaL files?
The price of storage is pretty cheap these days, so I rip all of my CDs to individual wav files. Then convert the files to FLAC and mp3. Then rip the CD to one big uncompressed wav file with a cue sheet. I use that as a backup that I can use to recreate the original CD. The FLAC files I play through the HUB and my AV system. The mp3 files I put on my iPod for when I’m traveling. I’m still in the process of ripping all of my CDs to hard disks and putting the physical CDs away.
This is interesting. I’ve never had to this. So you converted from wmaL to FLAC and all of the cover art and tags were preserved? And the files sound the same as the wmaL files?
__________________________________________________________
Yeah I converted the WMA Lossless files with dBpoweramp into FLAC Lossless. The files are showing as using CD quality bitrates. The program also carried all the track data across. The only thing it doesn’t do is carry the album art, but you can simply highlight all the tracks in an album and edit the id-tag. You can select the album art you like online via the window that popups up and chose a good quality album cover and apply to all tracks.
To be fair though, album art isn’t that useful on the WD tv live hub as I can’t get it to show on the artist overview page (and to be fair prefer the list view due to my volume of artists) and then the only other places you see the album art is on the now playing, which is tiny - even on my 50" telly.
I haven’t had a chance to fully test the sound but it appears to be full quality lossless and so its going to be as good as it gets.
Thanks for the info. As I said I’ve never had to do this lossless conversion, so your practical experience has proved my assumptions wrong! Yet again I’ve learned something new 
I looked at the dbPoweramp website, did you buy the software or can you do the conversions for free or with the trial? I’ve read that Foobar can do conversions for free.
you can download as a free trial, but you have to add the codec you need - in my case i need to add the WMA lossless coded. Flac codec is already included.
adsjruk wrote:
you can download as a free trial, but you have to add the codec you need - in my case i need to add the WMA lossless coded. Flac codec is already included.
This whole discussion you started has been very interesting. I decided to try converting wmaL to FLAC myself using foobar2000. I ripped a CD to wmaL using Windows Media Player 12 (Win 7). Then I installed foobar2000. Sure enough the wmaL files didn’t play on the HUB. I opened the wmaL files in foobar2000, highlighted all of files and right-clicked on them. You pick the “Convert” option then you can pick what type of format you want to convert to. It also gives a choice of different folder and file naming schemes. It converts really quickly and keeps the tags. It doesn’t add cover art but you can highlight the files, right click, go to “Tagging” and “Attach Picture” to add them manually. So if you don’t want to pay for dbPoweramp, foobar2000 is a free alternative.
I used foobar a long time ago. The latest version seems a lot easier to use, but still has a lot of customization if you like playing
Am I the only one who thinks the specs of the unit are “a little” misleading? When it says it supports WMA format, I expect support for all WMA, including lossless. It’s like if it says it supports mp3 and it only supports 320k but not 256k.
One of the reasons I purchased this media player was the advertised WMA support; all of my music library is in WMA lossless format. It would take a lot of time and/or space to convert to other acceptable format. Plus the struggle to preserve the artwork.
Is it possible to fix this with a future firmware?
zipix wrote:
Is it possible to fix this with a future firmware?
Nope. The chip can only decode what Sigma built it to decode.
Am I the only one who thinks the specs of the unit are “a little” misleading? When it says it supports WMA format, I expect support for all WMA, including lossless.
Well regardless of what you “expect”, and whether the files use the same extension, WMA ≠ WMA lossless, just like DTS ≠ DTS-MA. It is a different codec altogether. Nothing anywhere indicates WMA Lossless would be supported, just like nothing anywhere indicates DTS-MA is supported. It is not the same as if only certain bitrates of mp3 were supported.
But, even then, all the other video codecs DO list limitations. Not all h.264 video is supported – the file has to be within the specs that the chip was designed to decode – that’s why WD lists Sigma’s limitations. So it wouldn’t be “misleading” to say something like:
Supports .mp3
*up to 256k bitrates
See user’s manual for details
