Music File Format: WMA vs MP3

Neither.FLAC. And if it have to be low bitrate then OGG Vorbis.WMA is shit. MP3 is shit. But WMA is still more shitty than mp3.For one, MP3 dosent support, WMA does, to the fullest extent.MP3 can be decoded on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD and alot of other OS's.
WMA can be decoded on Windows and Mac.

Yes, theres the FFmpeg implementation, but this does not support WMA proNor can it play DRM protected wma.Nor Lossless WMA.That means, on linux you cant play WMA files encoded in more than 128kbits...Heres a quote from teh wiki

quote:

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WMA has been subjected to a number of complaints. "Some audiophiles challenge Microsoft's claims regarding WMA's quality," according to a published article from EDN.[12] Another article from MP3 Developments wrote that Microsoft's claim about CD-quality audio at 64 kbit/s with WMA was "very far from the truth."[54] At the early stages of WMA's development, a representative from RealNetworks claimed that WMA was a "clear and futile effort by Microsoft to catch up with RealAudio 8"[55]

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Microsoft has sometimes claimed that the sound quality of WMA at 64 kbit/s equals or exceeds that of MP3 at 128 kbit/s (commonly considered to be near-transparent). In a 1999 study funded by Microsoft, NSTL found that listeners preferred WMA at 64 kbit/s to MP3 at 128 kbit/s (as encoded by MusicMatch Jukebox).[56] However, a September 2003 public listening test conducted by Roberto Amorim found that listeners preferred 128 kbit/s MP3 to 64 kbit/s WMA audio with greater than 99% confidence. This conclusion applied equally to other codecs at the same bitrate, leading him to conclude that:
“ No codec delivers the marketing plot of same quality as MP3 at half the bitrates.

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Edited by rbp, : No reason given.