[Clavin]

I need help with Windows Media Audio (WMA) playback via DVD-Audio. I have my entire music collection encoded in FLAC and WMA. I have it in WMA so that I can share it via multiple devices throughout my house and when I heard that the Enclave’s audio system supported WMA, I was excited. The prospects of sharing my existing music library in HiFi while on the road sounded great (no pun intended). Unfortunately, I have not got it working.


In the case of existing WMA files, I was using a bit rate of 384 Kbps which is not compatible with the Enclave Entertainment System. After rereading the Enclave Owner’s manual, it appears that only certain bitrates are compatible. I reencoded my entire collection to 320 Kbps which should have been compatible according to the manual but still no love. Before I go through the effort of creating more “DVD-A” coasters, I was wondering if anyone has gotten this to work?

 

[smokeyy]

try a cd for your music. once i put my music on a cd...majic. it was another car but it worked.

 

[FlavorClav]

Sorry Clavin, I only have MP3s on CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. Did you check out the NAV Manual page 3-13? There are some important notes listed on the page.

 

[Rollin Thunder]

Sorry Clavin, I only have MP3s on CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. Did you check out the NAV Manual page 3-13? There are some important notes listed on the page.

how did you get dvd-r to work, i tried it and it said "disc un readable" i cleaned it and it still said it. only thing i can get dvd-r's to play on are my computers.

 

[Enclave4Me]

Not sure about the enclave yet, but it's pretty common for systems like this to not accept DVD-R media.
Try burning your WMA's onto CD media and you should be good to go... assuming you don't mind the few dozen CD's you'll be lugging around.

 

[FlavorClav]

how did you get dvd-r to work, i tried it and it said "disc un readable" i cleaned it and it still said it. only thing i can get dvd-r's to play on are my computers.

I didn't do anything special but I know some burners have issues with the type of DVDs and how fast the burn was done. I used Nero 7, created a "Data disc" and just dragged my MP3s in the window. I burned at max speed of 16x for the DVD I have (Verbatim DVD-R 16x) which Nero somehow knows. I used the same process for my CD-R and CD-RW. All worked. The only gripe I have is the slow "scan" when you press folders. Also I have found that it cannot display all the folders I created. My workaround is just to put everything on the root directory.

 

[Rollin Thunder]

wow that slow, my mac burned them to 48X for all music disc's even dvd's so i some how need to slow it down to 16X

 

[FlavorClav]

Best way is to do trial and error. Use RW first if you can. Even though RWs are low quality CDs, at least you'll be able to gauge what the player will accept. The laser pick up on the player may not be high quality compared to PCs and home DVD players. If your CDs are rated for 48x, burning them slower will give them even better recording.

 

[Clavin]

So after being caught up in other things, I made some more time to play around with this. I am pleased to report that I have made progress. After making several "coasters", I have been able to burn some WMA's to both CD-R and DVD+R media and successfully play it back through the Enclave. I have successfully played back WMA content that was ripped at 96kbit and 192kbit and burned as a data disc. Having never had a car that played back compressed audio, I found the Enclave "Music Navigator" interface on the NAV/Audio System to be very usable. 8) After allowing the system several minutes to scan/index the disc, it is easy to select songs via lists organized by folder, artist or album. With nearly 5GB of storage available on the DVD, I figure I can store a lot of tunes at reasonable high bitrates. I just need to experiment a little more to figure out the right combination. I also want to experiment with playlists which the manual indicates works, at least on some of the Audio systems. The manual could be better in this regard.

I will give an update after a little more experimentation.

 

[Canuck]

Clavin

What are using to rip and write the WMA?

 

[Clavin]

For the media that I was successful with last night, I ripped the music using Windows Media Player in Windows Vista. I burned it using a Toshiba CD/DVD utility that came with my laptop.

My goal is to get my 3000 song music library that is encoded by EAC in FLAC copied/converted to WMA so that it can be played in the Enclave and on the various media extenders in my house. I store the music in FLAC so that I have a lossless copy of the music then convert it, hopefully once, to a fairly high bitrate WMA which can be played back on all the devices including my home audio system. While the lower bitrate WMA files sounded fine in the Enclave, they were definitely lacking on the home system. Using a higher bitrate conversion should maintain a higher music quality that maybe overkill for the Enclave, but still sounds great at home.

I plan to keep experimenting.