Am 01. Oct, 2007 schwätzte Josef Lowder so:

> So far, I have copied some files from a little mp3 player that
> our daughter gave us to my 2006 Mandriva box and was glad to
> find 'amarok' (which I've seen several pluggers mention favorably)
> on my system and delighted to discover that it plays the 20-some
> files I downloaded just fine.  Good start.
>
> Some time ago, I had also downloaded but never before tried to
> play one .wma file and one .wav file.  Now I find that amarok
> plays the .wma file fine, but not the .wav file.

amarok should play the wav file.

> So, what is the difference between these various formats
> and how can I convert the .wav file to an .mp3?

Are you planning on only using this on your computer and not the mp3
player? If so, I suggest converting to flac or vorbis rather than mp3. Both
are free and open formats as well as arguably being much better.

flac is lossless from wav. ogg is lossy. What that means is that flac will
have as much information as the wav file, but vorbis will have less data.

vorbis is often called ogg, including by me.

Like vorbis mp3 is lossy and will have less data than the wav. Both vorbis
and mp3 compress the data by removing pieces that ostensibly don't affect
the sound. They're usually good enough.

If you're wanting to archive these files I suggest using flac as the
archive format.

ciao,

der.hans
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