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Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) - still no support for WMA Lossless?

124.189.36.153
Posted on November 4, 2009 at 21:33:07
Christine Tham
Reviewer

Posts: 4634
Location: Sydney
Joined: December 29, 2001
 Just installed a few days ago.

Seems to have fixed most of the bugs from 9.04, so I don't need to compile my own kernel, alsa etc. anymore. Yay!

However, still no joy getting anything to recognise WMA Lossless. rhythmbox, totem, mplayer can't find a suitable plugin (yes, I have the relevant packages from Medibuntu already installed) and Amarok recognises the files but plays them "silently."

If anyone can offer some help will be much appreciated.

I do have Windows Media Player installed (via Crossover) so I can always use that as a last resort.

I also have XP running under KVM (for the pesky Windows only apps) - wow, the new virtio drivers are *fast* virtual XP run almost as fast as native - but again prefer not to play music over a virtual OS.

RE: Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) - still no support for WMA Lossless?, posted on November 10, 2009 at 08:12:22
Alchemy
Audiophile

Posts: 4
Location: Northeast Wisconsin
Joined: May 7, 2009
 Most of the apps you mentioned use gstreamer for the "backend". Fluendo sells gstreamer codecs for many proprietary formats. Including, I believe, WMA. You may want to give them a look.

WMA requires a license from Microsoft, posted on November 5, 2009 at 15:11:06
Dynaudio_Rules
Audiophile

Posts: 5594
Location: Georgia
Joined: April 1, 2005
 I am guessing no one has found a way to hack it or is interested in investing time to do so because there are so many alternatives. Why not convert to something else....wav perhaps?



Scrutiny Strengthens The Truth and Breaks Down Lies 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
RE: WMA requires a license from Microsoft, posted on November 5, 2009 at 16:52:34
Tony Lauck
Audiophile

Posts: 3048
Location: Vermont
Joined: November 12, 2007
Contributor
  Since: February 24, 2009
 Enough reason not to use it, IMO.

Given that there are free FLAC codecs for most platforms there is little need for WMA lossless compression. WMA Lossless is only a few percent more effective in file size than FLAC, but this comes at the expense of much greater CPU requirements, at least on compression (I haven't bench marked expansion). No technical reason to use it, and plenty of economic and/or political reasons not to. Unless you love supporting M$...



Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

RE: WMA requires a license from Microsoft, posted on November 5, 2009 at 16:58:27
Dynaudio_Rules
Audiophile

Posts: 5594
Location: Georgia
Joined: April 1, 2005
 Sounds like WMA is fast becoming a format of the past...alla BetaMax.



Scrutiny Strengthens The Truth and Breaks Down Lies 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋

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