Now, howabout you provide a sample where WMA9 is clearly better than WMA8 using similar encoder settings? If someone is really interested in comparing different WMA codecs (rather than bashing the format all the time), I could provide three 64 kbps samples based on the c't reference file. I downloaded the older in_wm.dll from Roberto's website the other day, because I wanted to make sure that I would not overlook another possible "personal winner" again... So what I've got right now is the WMA9 sample that came along with the c't test, a WMA8 file done with Microsoft's encoding utility and a WMA? file done with the WMA output plugin from Winamp v2.81, which is probably WMA7, because its info screen states "v0.90, © 1999 Nullsoft Inc., compiled March 4, 2001". I assume that c't encoded the WMA9 sample at 64 kbps CBR, but cannot confirm this, because they never answered to my mail nor published any supplements to their test report, as far as I know. The difficulties with this reference file have been described before, not only by me, so you would have to think about a good method to cope with the three different excerpts in one file for yourself and decide if you want to ABX them independently or whatever. Hearing them so often during the last weeks, I can say that they can serve as a valid comparison base, but you have to take your time to find what you're after and don't hurry. So the original is rather "average" sounding, not critical, at least not for most of the time. If you're interested, tell me if you want them renamed to their real codec name or not and if you'd like to compare them with other files (e.g. with the reference file, I guess). I won't be home until the next day, so I cannot upload anything earlier than Saturday evening. By the way, the size for each codec sample is about 3.5 MB in WAV format, and WinRAR would compress it to about 2/3 of this size, just like Shorten.