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Wma Vs Mp3

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Does anyone here use WMA files much?... Microsoft's answer to music compression?

I got a basic 128 MB MP3 Player to use in the gym which stores about 25 songs at 128 kb/s but it also plays WMA files which seem to produce a similar sounding quality file at 64 kbs/s .. and that's just using WMA 8, version 9 is supposed to provide 20% better sounding files.

Anyway it's pretty handy to have a player that can play both formats as WMA files are smaller and so more songs in the same space.

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Just tried this program to convert some MP3's to WMA 9 @ 64 kb/s VBR sounds really good


    http://www.dbpoweramp.com

    There is definately an improvement over version 8 using 2 pass encoding!!
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    OGG are smaller than both and better quality.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    WMA = lose for so many reasons.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've used 128kb/s WMAs for about 5 years, alongside with my MP3 collection. They're rated about the same. The only disadvantage of the WMA from my point of view is that Mixmeister DJ mixing software doesn't beat-match WMAs as well.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by Felix Da Housecat
    OGG are smaller than both and better quality.

    completely agree with you here about ogg
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    Dr PirateDr Pirate Posts: 8,303 Legendary Poster
    Originally posted by jake0
    completely agree with you here about ogg

    Who here has an ogg player???

    *watches tumbleweed*

    MP3 = Win
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by Dr Pirate
    Who here has an ogg player???

    *watches tumbleweed*

    MP3 = Win

    winamp?

    winamp plays .ogg files you know...
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    owned
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    Dr PirateDr Pirate Posts: 8,303 Legendary Poster
    Originally posted by jake0
    winamp?

    winamp plays .ogg files you know...

    No no, I mean like an IPod type thing.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The size of MP3's isn't such an issue anymore for the home user as 200GB hard drives can be bought for around £100, thus solving any storage issues. The only advantage .wma's have is their smaller size, and therefore being able to fit more on to a portable player. But you have to make sure your portable player plays .wma files as well as MP3's (not all do).
    OGG. Nice idea, good sound, but just not popular enough. It's become a bit of the Betamax of the compressed music files. :(
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

    if anyone wants to try for themselves making MP3's or WMA's from their existing CD collections
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    @ Wobble

    I compressed the same song to MP3 and WMA at 128 bitrate. The WMA was only 1 kb smaller in filesize.

    Regarding OGG files. Did the "Ape" format ever kick off? When I was researching non-lossy formats, I came across OGG and APE. I settled for APE in the end. You use a program called Monkey's Audio to do the compression work and it includes a Winamp plug-in to play the Ape files.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    OGG files sound nicer, but it's hard to find anything to rip songs to the hard drive.

    WMA is crap though.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by Monserrat
    @ Wobble

    I compressed the same song to MP3 and WMA at 128 bitrate. The WMA was only 1 kb smaller in filesize.


    Well what were you expecting??

    128 kb/s CBR is 128 kb/s CBR (Constant Bit Rate) no matter what you use to encode it with.

    Try doing the same file with VBR or try making a WMA file using only 64 kb/s and also an MP3 and then listen and see which one sounds better and if it's of acceptable quality to your ears. If not try a higher rate and better quality setting.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by Kermit
    WMA is crap though.

    Care to expand on that? Would be nice if people gave reasons for their thoughts...


    I've converted about 50 of my favourite MP3's to WMA to fit on my little Music Player so I can have something to listen to in the gym that is small and light .. they sound pretty good and I can only think if I converted them from the original CD's they'd sound even better.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It's Microsoft. And you need Win media Player to use it.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    where as mp3 is pretty much universally used and usable
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by Kermit
    It's Microsoft. And you need Win media Player to use it.


    You don't have to use Media Player - you just need to the codec and aplyer that supports it .. same as you would with MP3

    I use the free version of this rogram and it works well.

    http://www.bsplayer.org/index.php?p=about&PHPSESSID=47fa559f4510d67963412c5074515498
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    @ Diamond Geezer

    What was I expecting? It was because Wobble said that WMAs were actually smaller than the equivalent MP3. Then I said that they were only 1K difference.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It depends upon the settings. There are quite a few to play with.
    I've only just discovered VBR settings, and wish I'd ripped my CD collection using VBR now. :( Could go back and redo them, but can't be arsed, as 128 does the job 99.99% of the time. :)
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by DiamondGeezer
    You don't have to use Media Player

    I know, I use winamp which is still just about the best one.

    But WMA is still quite unreliable.
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