One of the reasons I bought a Genesis G80 a few years ago was that it had a decent surround sound system that played DVDs. I soon learned about some of its shortcomings, some of which are described here, https://genesisowners.com/genesis-forum/threads/2018-g80-multichannel-music-questions.35708/ ,but overall, I remain satisfied. I quickly tired of transporting discs to, from, and inside the car, so I looked into using its USB drive. Unfortunately, the system won't play multichannel FLAC files, but it will play MC WMA files.
I played around with the settings in dBpoweramp and found that this combination worked, even though the manual said the system would play only up to 330 kbps:
Those are the settings I used to create the WMA files currently on my USB drive. Yes, the files are lossy and compressed, but they sound pretty good. Recently, I tried these lossless settings:
These files were about ten times larger, but the system wouldn't play them. Today, I tried these settings:
Compared to the settings on my existing WMA files, these settings use variable bit rate instead of constant bit rate, 48 kHz instead of 44 kHz, and 24 bit instead of 16 bit. I think these settings sound better, but that could be expectation bias. The files are about the same size, which is quite small, and the actual bit rates of the songs, while variable, are pretty close to the 440 kbps in the existing files. I'm considering re-converting my FLAC files using these new settings, but of course, that would entail some effort. I'm wondering if there is anything inherently or empirically better about these new settings in terms of bit rate, sample rate, or bit depth.
I played around with the settings in dBpoweramp and found that this combination worked, even though the manual said the system would play only up to 330 kbps:
Those are the settings I used to create the WMA files currently on my USB drive. Yes, the files are lossy and compressed, but they sound pretty good. Recently, I tried these lossless settings:
These files were about ten times larger, but the system wouldn't play them. Today, I tried these settings:
Compared to the settings on my existing WMA files, these settings use variable bit rate instead of constant bit rate, 48 kHz instead of 44 kHz, and 24 bit instead of 16 bit. I think these settings sound better, but that could be expectation bias. The files are about the same size, which is quite small, and the actual bit rates of the songs, while variable, are pretty close to the 440 kbps in the existing files. I'm considering re-converting my FLAC files using these new settings, but of course, that would entail some effort. I'm wondering if there is anything inherently or empirically better about these new settings in terms of bit rate, sample rate, or bit depth.
