I certainly don't want to start any kind of war here - Just looking for information rather than marketing (MS) info.

Did a little reading the other night, and came across several articles/reviews/tests that claim WMA is substantially better than or at least "more bitrate efficient" than MP3 (depending on who you ask).

So, for fun, I ripped several tracks. Classical music, Pink Floyd, Ska, Reggae, Rock. All were ripped to WAV, and then encoded to MP3 128, MP3 VBR (LAME alt preset standard), and WMA at 96kbit. (Using Music Match and WMA 8).

All the files were uploaded to the empeg, which was plugged into my home stereo for comparison purposes. I played the wav file, then the others in random order (I didnt know which were wich till I looked). The results suprised me.

I could not tell the difference between the VBR MP3 and the WAV, as you would expect (except this one pink floyd song, which gets butchered for some reason). But more suprising to me, I could also not tell the difference between the 96Kbit WMA and the WAV, or the MP3 VBR. The 128 MP# I could tell some differences on most tracks. (I mean its listenable, but I can tell)

Now, the majority of my music is encoded 160-192 MP3. All my newer stuff is VBR, which averages 160-192 as well. I'm thinking of swithcing to WMA tho, as I could fit a LOT more onto my empeg (which is rapidly getting full).

What, oh great gods of knowledge, are the downsides to WMA? Other than the MS as big-brother aspects. Keeping in mind that I dont view my mp3/wma collection as an archive - I keep my CDs for that. I have yet to find an article that did an objective comparison between mp3 and wma whre mp3 won... (Now Ogg, thats another thread...)

Finally, is what I read true - that advances in WMA encoding automatically work on older WMA decoders? I.e. they claim wma9 is even better, and that you dont have to upgrade the decoder??? What decoder is the empeg using, etc....

Thanks for any input, and lets keep it constructive and objective.

-Jeff

For me, the biggest thing keeping me in the MP3 realm right now is utility.

I have an entire suite of useful tools that work only with MP3 files and can't be used on WMA files. Things like MP3 Tag Studio, GapKiller, etc. And I can rest comfortably knowing that I'll be able to transfer those files to any type of player or stream them to any networked player I buy in the future. I don't have that with WMA.

If WMA can pull off better encoding at lower bit rates, that's fine. But since I've got an empeg, disk space is not my limiting factor any more. Once any encoded file format is up to the level where I can't distinguish it from the CD (as with properly-encoded high bitrate MP3s), then all I'm left with is the other features of the file format as the deciding factors.

I do occasionally encode things in WMA, such as voice recordings at low bit rates, because I understand that it can do better in those situations. But primarily I stick with MP3 because of convenience.

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For me, the biggest thing keeping me in the MP3 realm right now is utility.

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That's it with me in a heartbeat.

I have not even LOOKED at encoding in WMA (heck, i don't even know HOW) because I edit my MP3 in Sound Forge, all my utilities deal with MP3..

Agian, like I said, I haven't even remotly considered WMA encoding because of that. (Possibly the same for OGG, FLAC, etc..)

(Hey! That just gave me an idea! I wanna see a MOD player for the empeg. (Uhm, anyone remember those?!))

Me.

I wanna see a MOD player for the empeg. (Uhm, anyone remember those?!) YES! I have a few CD's full of MOD/XM/S3M (etc) files. I was into tracking back before MP3's came out. There are still some amazing tracks that I'd love to be able to listen to on the empeg without much fuss.

Hey! That just gave me an idea! I wanna see a MOD player for the empeg

I asked the feasability of this as my 4th post

I would also like to see the mod player. I could always try to make wavs outta them and then encode them, but yuck!

...as my 10Gig HU became full I was dismayed. Then upon doing some research on what Windows Media Player can do I was happy to see that a WMA file is about 1/2 the size of an MP3 of the same quality...so I began deleting some stuff that I had ripped and managed to put twice as much music on. If I had a 60Gig I wouldn't have bothered as I dont beleive I would have filled it up. But in my car, which has considerable road noise, I find no noticable deterioration in listening quality with WMA files. Now that is all I use.

I believe I will proceed with caution here, however since I'm going to be fully re-encoding most of my CD's (Many, even most were encoded at 128 mp3) I believe I will use WMA for some files, pending more research....

I believe there are tools similar to tag studio that work on wma as well. I've just started looking at the various offerings that support wma, and was actually suprised how many tools do support it.

Question: jemplode right now can do somewhat rudimentary backup of the empeg. I believe it can copy files, name them according to rules, and write tags... Am I wrong about the tag thing? I would assume that it will not be able to write tags for wma files? This migth be a concern, although if there's enough interest and jemplode or emplode (as per prior thread) become capable of true backup I would ask that wma support be included.

Jeff

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I would also like to see the mod player. I could always try to make wavs outta them and then encode them, but yuck!

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Aye. It's just not the same. I mean, with MOD (and associated filetypes, like 669's, X3M's, the usual) half the enjoyment was watching the individual tracks / output levels. (This is when playing, of course. Then there's the whole "Let's Modify it!" part.)
But, it *IS* possible, and it actually makes me want to go dig out mine and convert a few..

Me.

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I would also like to see the mod player. I could always try to make wavs outta them and then encode them, but yuck!

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I have several around.. soemwhere. I think I even still have a copy of the old DOS program 'DMP' on a ZIP disk or soemthing.

For the record, there is a MOD/X3M and associated file type plugin for Winamp, and you CAN use the WaveOut functrion to make a WAV file (then do your own MP3 enpcoding).. Thinking about this, I may actually do a few that I really like.

Me.

Yep, I still have all my stuff from back then on a cd... including Fast Tracker II, IT, etc.

I've encoded some of them into MP3's, but it would be so much nicer to just be able to play them as-is. With a GB+ worth of them, it could get old, fast, trying to transfer them all over.


There's probably a batch converter somewhere....hmm...

Oh, and, JICYDK, there was a Unofficial Fast Tracker 3 beta released in 2000 that looked pretty promising, too bad it didn't go anywhere.