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Why Are the WMA and MP3 Formats?
The biggest question when formatting newly recorded audio is the WMA/MP3 question. As a musician and former home recorder, this question always bothered me a little bit. So the biggest question really is what are the advantages and disadvantages of both? The second biggest question is what software is available out there for both? We’ll answer both for you.
The WMA attractiveness comes from Microsoft’s claim that this format is the most accurate audio format available to date. The Windows Media Audio (WMA) format is definitely bulky enough to back up this claim. Recordings of the same clip in WMA format will nearly always be larger than those of MP3s. Microsoft has tried to make up for this my having the WMA format play at a higher bitrate than MP3s. That is- make it go faster. A lot of people still aren’t convinced.
MP3, MPEG3 or Moving Pictures Experts Group-Layer 3 all describe the audio format we all use in our MP3 players. The biggest advantage that MP3 has over WMA at this point has got to be in the file size. MP3 formatting of a recorded piece involves the elimination of the bits that the human ear cannot hear anyway. This can greatly reduce the file size, though Microsoft claims this degrades the quality.
Looking at both WMA and MP3 files on the same audio player you have to wonder which one will sound better and the answer is, it’s hard to tell. A lot of this depends on your player’s capability. WMAs sound better than MP3s at the same bitrate, but the average person will not be able to tell the difference unless they really concentrate. So that’s no help in deciding things at all. So you can eliminate bitrate differential from our argument here.
MP3s store better because they are smaller. This is not to say they are THAT much smaller, but they are. On a very limited hard drive such as an audio player, this can be the difference between 400 songs or getting a full 600. So MP3s win in that department and it shows as they are the preferred music format for most people. For recording and computer things, WMAs have been the standard as they retain digital source better and hard drive space on a computer is generally not an issue.
WMAs will play on “MP3″ players, mostly. You have to remember when music players first came out, space was limited. Because of the limited space, smaller files were preferred. The size comparison of the files has not changed any, but the size of the hard drives has. The thing is though; everyone is already used to dealing with MP3s, so stick with what you know.
Converting from WMA to MP3 format is not a bad thing and can be done on nearly any home computer. The problem is getting a good conversion rate and speed. This process can take awhile. Converting from MP3 to WMA takes a little less time, but unless you have a WMA specific project, it’s kind of a silly thing to do. The more you convert any file, the more quality you lose. Like making a copy of a copy of a copy and so on.
So overall in the war between WMA and MP3 format we’d have to go with MP3 for size and not much of a drop-off in sound quality. However for musical projects WMA seems to be the preference as the range of audio frequency is higher. I think like most other formats, each serves a purpose, but unless you’re a musician, serious music lover or have the ears of a canine, MP3 will serve you just fine.
Zeeman Haus enjoys writing articles online on a variety of subjects. You can check out his latest website on Touch Screen Mp3 Players which provides top deals on touch screen MP3 players From Creative Labs, Coby, Visual Land and more.
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