Hey guys, today Microsoft announced that they'll be stopping development of Expression Studio in order to merge their two software development packages (ES and VS) into one, obviously continuing the development of VS as it was miles better. Of all included applications, only Blend will continue to be developed.

They've also announced that they won't be making any new versions of Encoder, but instead will be focusing on Azure's Media Services. That's kind of bad since I don't have an interest in the whole thing, just in encoding WAVs into lossless WMAs.

They'll support Encoder up until 2020, so I am not worried about it not working tomorrow, but anyways, do you know any good encoding applications that support WAVs -> WMA lossless, and backwards?

(I could make one, but I rather not bother with that right now if possible.)

Kind of in agrement with you here, but I'll ask some friends (soundtechs) and see if they have any suggestions.

Are you looking for open sourced or just anything Elenarie?

The latest FFmpeg builds support decoding WMA Lossless, but apparently not encoding it; that's half a solution, if nothing else.

That's more or less what I've found. I know that some software like DBPoweramp will encode WMA, but it appears that you have to use MS' codecs to do so.

I've never used WMA lossless in part because I know that sometimes I like to run Linux or *BSD and WMA doesn't really work well outside of the Windows world.

Sony Soundforge might handle or Realplayer, but those are all proprietary and I'd be surprised if they retain support much past the point where MS stops supporting the format.

I agree with the previous posters. Just use FLAC.

The codec is not an issue at all, FLAC and others also suffer from the same problem (not a very good dedicated encoding / decoding application with lots of options).

My main concern is that Encoder relies on .NET 2.0-3.5, well, at least the whole Expression Studio package does, haven't tested Encoder specifically. Since .NET < 4.0 is not automatically installed in 8 (and will probably not support future Windows releases at all), I'm just looking for an alternative / lightweight replacement.

I can do batch decoding into WAVs in a matter of seconds, so that's not an issue at all (if for some reason WMA is abandoned (it has full Azure and WinRT support so it won't go away anytime soon, if ever (unless a better codec is developed)).

Basically a simple, two buttons application screaming 'Encode' and 'Decode', that can be upgraded to future .NET releases (assuming a source code is available and the app uses .NET) or just one that doesn't rely on other frameworks would be just fine (console app is fine too, I'll make a GUI in WPF for that).

I'm clearly not understanding what you're saying. Why would a lossless encoder need to have a lot of options? It's a serious question, apart from naming and cue sheets, I can't think of anything else that you would want to do that would result in a losless file. I suppose, you can be more or less aggressive, but that's about it. ?

Would something like DBPoweramp be OK then? The main irritation I have with the program is that they lost cuesheet support, but the amount of work you need to do to convert into or out of WMA should be minimal.

Honestly, I recommend against counting on things like that. VMs may or may not still support current OSes at that point. Especially since the only reason to be running them is to run software that should have been updated a long time ago. It would be sort of like running Windows 98 now. Nobody does that by choice.

Well, part of why I am currently using Encoder, is because I can set the file tags / information through it before the encoding process starts. It also supports WMAL to WMA Pro, meaning I get to keep all tags while converting to lossy format (for when I want to transfer the audio files to my Windows Phone).

But if that's not available in other applications, then a two button app will do just fine. It kind of will if it is locked to .NET < 4.0 (will test this tomorrow).

Anyways, I found a few SDK samples, one of them does the encoding, but to WMA Pro with the lowest quality. Settings are hardcoded, but at least I have the source code and can modify it as needed, so things are looking well.

EDIT: Hmm, I wonder whether this can be implemented in WinRT... could turn out to be a nice app if it is possible. Will check that out, thanks.

Thanks for all the replies so far, guys.

It should do what you're asking for just fine. Worst case scenario with a lot of these tools is you just use a 3rd party tagger. Obviously, that's not as convenient, but I know for Linux they typically write a program that uses an encoder and a separate program to tag. But, with Windows, DBpoweramp or similar should be able to do the entire procedure without needing an additional tool.

Personally, I keep my CDs with Matroska and embed the cue sheet inside it. But, I've also been known to use FLAC or Monkey's audio with a cuesheet. MKA, is nice just for convenience and IIRC you can embed a WMA file in there as well.

Looks like Encoder needs .NET 4.0 specifically, so that should give it at least half a dozen years of compatibility without installing additional stuff.

The most future-proof way would be to code an app directly against the Media Foundation APIs, but they're done in C++ and I've never bothered to learn it more than the level which was required for the uni projects.
I don't have physical stuff, threw that away a while ago (only the CDs that my girl gave me are alive). Most of my stuff comes from singles and EPs, rarely buy albums (unless its a gift for my girl or my sister). So using MK* files would add just another level of complexity.

I was keeping the tracks in WAVs previously, but the free space on the HDD started running out fast.

EDIT: It would be awesome if artists / stores start releasing their stuff in 32-bit floating point samples... yes, I doubt we'll be able to hear noticeable difference compared to 24-bit samples, but still, it would benefit the aliens with big brains and ears.

You wouldn't hear any difference at all, except perhaps on some indie albums where they're using more dynamic range. Most modern CDs have been compressed sufficiently that they could master it to vinyl without skipping.

All it would do is take up an extra byte of space for every sample.

Adding more samples per second might give a bit more quality, but I'm not sure that it would make a meaningful difference. When I switched to Shure earbuds and Sennheiser ear muffs for listening, I had to pretty much throw out all my MP3s and reencode them again. I doubt that there's enough left over audio after switching to Lame standard preset 192kbps variable to make the extra storage space worth while. I just keep the lossless copies so I don't have to spend the couple weeks it takes to rerip things if I need a different compression setting.