MP3 vs WMA

[Nightcrawlerguy]

I need everyone's opinion. I'm trying to decide to keep my files as mp3s or wma (using codec 9). Well, everyone? What do you think?

[Mr Jones]

Why not to use WMA..
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....threadid=81838

[Nightcrawlerguy]

according to that page, it really isn't a good idea. Mr. Jones, you use mp3 only? What birate, if I may ask.

[Kalervo Manni]

If you have to use different format than MP3, Ogg Vorbis is the right format.

[Some1]

lol...why are people STILL under the impression that WMA is a valid file format? Use MP3, and if for whatever reason you feel that MP3 isn't good enough, use OGG.

[fwgx]

Originally posted by Some1
lol...why are people STILL under the impression that WMA is a valid file format?

Because people have never heard the arguments before and against it's use. It's called being new to the topic.

[QQLover]

guys,know about mp3pro ???
excellent product!!

[thepyr0x]

no, not excellent product
bad, bad thing

[Mr Jones]

Why not to use MP3PRO
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread....threadid=81838

Same thread as the WMA one,

[binary hero]

Originally posted by QQLover
guys,know about mp3pro ???
excellent product!!

about as excellent as realplayer PRO is (or whatever they are calling it now. realONE-pro-xp?)

[QQLover]

why why why???

/btw,your reply so quickly

[Jay]

mp3pro IMO was a last ditch effort to save themselves from the next revolution of codecs. The reasons not to switch are quite large and mentioned in the post above. For me the "quality increase" was not enough for me to even considered. Plus add the fact that an accessible player is not as easy to come by as say a regualar mp3 player.

[Mr Jones]

Originally posted by QQLover
why why why???

/btw,your reply so quickly

Did you read the link?, lemme print it here for you just in case....

Originally posted by peter
1. Patents / licenses.
Yes, kids, it would cost us to include mp3pro decoder with Winamp. More info here. mp3pro support will be probably never bundled with winamp; if you want to use mp3pro, you have to live with crappy third-party plugins. At least WMA can be used for free (it's based on microsoft's drivers).

2. Closed source, no publicly available libraries.
It's simple. You encode mp3pro or WMA under Windows, play them using Winamp, everything is fine. But if you decide to switch to another player, you might find that you can't play mp3pro anymore just because the mp3pro developers didn't decide to make a freely-available plugin for it, or creators of that player don't want to pay for licensing (hell, who does ?). WMA is less problematic here, at least most of windows-based software can handle it these days. But still, there are NO available mp3pro decoders for OS's different than Windows, WMA is currently available only for Windows and Mac. Decoders for other OS's might appear only if owners of these formats decide to make them (or someone pays them for permission, then releases commercial/shareware decoder); you can safely assume that WMA will be never ported to Linux for an example. If you decide to change OS or want to share your musc collection with a friend who doesn't use Windows, these formats might become totally useless.

3. DRM encryption in WMA.
Latest Windows Media Player encodes DRM-encrypted files which can be *only* played on the computer which encoded them. You can't give them to your friends; you might be unable to play them after reinstalling Windows on the same computer. Here is an example.

4. Converting to other formats.
Someday, you might want to convert your music files to WAV format for burning on CD. WMA format doesn't allow that. Winamp's WMA plugin used to do that a few versions ago, but it no longer does because of microsoft's licensing shit. (old plugin still available here, use the diskwriter plugin as with any other format). Also, you need the old plugin too if you want to use DSP with WMA.

5. Quality.
Both WMA and mp3pro are optimized for low bitrates. Of course, this makes novice users think that they sound better - "CD quality at 64kbps" according to official propaganda. Currently, Ogg Vorbis outperforms both WMA and mp3pro at any bitrate. Modern MP3 encoders (LAME) totally outperform WMA at 128kbps and above; mp3pro format is low-bitrate-only so you can never get close to transparent quality with it (the mp3pro optimizations only try to restore high frequencies at very low bitrates, mp3pro doesn't have "high quality" modes). In other words - they *might* sound good to you now, but your audiophile friend will tell you that they're crap, and so will you when you get better speakers. For audiophile-friendly quality, use Ogg Vorbis with -q5 or better, LAME with alt presets or MPC. WMA/mp3pro might be useful for streaming, but current Ogg Vorbis version does almost everything they do, and does it better (and is FREE).

6. Alternatives.
Ogg Vorbis - THE patent-free open format - http://www.vorbis.com/
MP3/LAME (free high-quality MP3 encoder) - http://www.mp3dev.org/
MPC (another high-quality format) - http://www.musepack.org/

for more info, dig Project Mayhem forums.


Addeneum: Why Converting Between Lossy Formats Sucks.
By encoding a track into some lossy format, you *always* lose quality. Therefore, if you convert from one lossy format to another (eg. from WMA to OGG), the destination file will always sound worse than source one, no matter what settings you use. If you want to get rid of your WMAs/mp3pros, re-rip source CDs into another format if you can; if the sources aren't available, it's better to keep them in existing format rather than convert to another one.

[binary hero]

Originally posted by QQLover
/btw,your reply so quickly

i am bored.

[QQLover]

oops
so¡_¡_
£º£©

[QQLover]

where are u?
your room?school?company?

[binary hero]

college library.

[zootm]

people, you all know that ogg makes sense. you get the same quality as a higher average bitrate VBR MP3, it's patent-free and it's basically just shit-hot. respect.

[fwgx]

Plus it makes you look clever when you say you don't use MP3's as you prefer ogg files. Then people go: 'ogg? wtf is that?'. You just smile and walk away safe in the knowledge your a superior person for your compression choice.

[zootm]

Originally posted by Phily Baby
Plus it makes you look clever when you say you don't use MP3's as you prefer ogg files. Then people go: 'ogg? wtf is that?'. You just smile and walk away safe in the knowledge your a superior person for your compression choice.

damn straight!

really though, i didn't know what ogg was before i came on these forums. now i swear by it...

[Curi0us_George]

The changes to MP3pro are only beneficial in low bitrates (e.g. 64).

[Jay]

an elitist society of ogg users, now I have seen it all.

[thepyr0x]

have you seen an elitist society of pedophiles??

[zootm]

i'm not elitist, i just want everyone to use ogg it's better, after all..

[SNYder]

musepack ownz you all

notice how the z in "ownz" makes me appear hip?

[Nightcrawlerguy]

What is ogg? Will it read on portable cd/mp3 players that are able to read .wma filez? Is ogg similar to wma?

[Some1]

What is ogg?

Ogg is a completely open-sourced audio compression format.

http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/index.html

Will it read on portable cd/mp3 players that are able to read .wma filez?

No. Not unless the player documentation specifically states that it can play ogg files (which is extremely unlikely, even with a new CD player).

Is ogg similar to wma?

Ogg > MP3 > WMA

[Nightcrawlerguy]

thank you for the informatin. I seriosuly want to be able to place 20 albums on a disc using wma, but was strongly urged against it. I guess I will stick with mp3 format. Thank you all for your help!