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Topic: Can WMA Lossless be read by any other WMA codec (Read 4919 times) previous topic - next topic
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Can WMA Lossless be read by any other WMA codec

New to the Forum but have a burning question!

I have my entire audio library archived in FLAC using EAC. I just recently purchased a receiver - Yamaha RX-V775WA. I am using WMP12 as a server to stream my audio
to the receiver. Unfortunately, even with the latest firmware updates, my receiver does not recognize the FLAC album artwork (which was painstakingly scanned in if a high
resolution image could not be found). I experimented with WAV and WMA Lossless, and found that all tagging info including the album artwork worked with WMA
Lossless. I promptly (250+ GB - 2 Days) made an additional converted copy of my library in WMA Lossless. While the WMA file extension doesn't tell you what "version" it is,
Foobar identifies it as WMA Lossless and the file size and Kbps are on par with lossless. (I assumed the Kbps would be correlated in some linear fashion between the two codecs,
but was surprised to see that while they are all probably +/-5% of the original some were higher and lower on a single album - a question for another forum!)

When I researched the receiver, Crutchfield specs says it supports "WMA (up to 48kHz/320kbps)". In the actual owners manual for the receiver, it says "The unit
supports the playback of WAV (PCM format only), MP3, WMA.... and also "The unit is compatible with sampling rates of up to 192 kHz for WAV and FLAC files, and 48 kHz for
other files. My (limited) understanding of WMA files is that the different versions use completely different codecs and are not compatible with each other. As I can't see the
actual bitrate of the music as it is being played, I want to make sure the receiver is in fact playing the WMA Lossless and not "downscaling" it in any way or being read by the
WMA Lossy codec.

(As a side note to my "cherished" album art - WMP12(or WMA) is using its hidden file "small album artwork jpeg" on the receiver so the resolution isn't great anyway!)

Can WMA Lossless be read by any other WMA codec

Reply #1 –
"WMA" and "WMA lossless" are two completely incompatible codecs. Your receiver does not support WMA lossless, so your music is being converted to some other format before playback.

Quote from: JDP205 on
(As a side note to my "cherished" album art - WMP12(or WMA) is using its hidden file "small album artwork jpeg" on the receiver so the resolution isn't great anyway!)
So instead of converting your FLAC files to something else, why not just create those album art images?

Can WMA Lossless be read by any other WMA codec

Reply #2 –
My guess would have been that if the receiver didn't support WMA Lossless it simply wouldn't play it / recognize the file.

As far as the album art, I would love to have them appear in the Yamaha GUI. What does appear is the FLAC file logo. Until I did a firmware update the receiver wasn't "seeing" the artist tag, only the album and song - with the update I get everything but still no album art. The album art works in Foobar and WMP - not sure why not here.

Can WMA Lossless be read by any other WMA codec

Reply #3 –
It seems improbable that your receiver would play WMA lossless but not advertise its support anywhere. If you're using WMP as a media server, it's much more likely that WMP is transcoding automatically.

My Fuze+ supports embedded album art, but only in MP3 files - not Ogg Vorbis. I wouldn't be surprised if your receiver has similar limitations. Putting the album art in a separate file named "folder.jpg" fixed the problem for me; have you tried doing this yet?

Can WMA Lossless be read by any other WMA codec

Reply #4 –
EAC creates a separate "folder.jpg" in each album folder. Then of course WMP adds the "hidden files" album art small.jpg.

Its definitely frustrating to have the album art and to not see it. Besides "supporting" the album art in WMA Lossless (or whatever downscaled format it has been transcoded to), the receiver picks up the album art from the kids ipods with the apple airplay. Again though, MP3, AAC in container, but not Ogg-Vorbis. Why you would build a receiver that supports FLAC but not ALL the metadata is beyond me. Seems like something they could fix with a fairly simple firmware update.

Can WMA Lossless be read by any other WMA codec

Reply #5 –
I think WMP automatically transcodes to whatever the client device supports.  Its not actually streaming the raw source files.

Can WMA Lossless be read by any other WMA codec

Reply #6 –
I certainly appreciate the help. Luckily, I learned a little bit about batch converting files from FLAC to another format and had the available storage on hand as well as the extra machine to tie up for a couple of days but at the end of the day I don't want/need the WMA lossless if it is being played as a standard WMA compressed/lossy file on my receiver.

I think I will pursue trying to figure out how to get the album art into the GUI of my receiver. 1st step will be to contact Yamaha and see if they have any answers and next would be to possibly pursue more unconventional methods. It is obvious the receiver is "seeing" the ID3 tags. I've read many a discussion as to why would you want to try to put an ID3 tag into a FLAC file, but I might experiment with a couple and see the results I get. I would certainly always have my archived library with the standard FLAC metadata container and Ogg Vorbis comments.