Why the low popularity/usage of WMA Lossless? (according to the poll), Split from: 2012 ripping/encoding poll Options

[HTS]

What's so bad about WMAL?

[Porcus]

What's so bad about WMAL?

Except that hardly anybody uses it, and it is not very well supported? Even ffmpeg, which supports a codec list long as this, fails to decode it.

And it lacks features like ReplayGain support.


To counter it: Why choose WMA (lossy or lossless), except if you want to stick to Windows Media Player or really need something which Windows Explorer identifies as 'audio'?

( ... the obvious answer was «DRM» ... )

[HTS]

What about reliability? Microsoft is a huge company and didn't update their thing for years, so pretty much a "tried and true" format?

Sometimes for freeware I have seen when an update goes out that has a bug, and they had to revert it but too bad for the people who already used it extensively.

This post has been edited by db1989: Jan 10 2012, 21:07

Reason for edit: removing unnecessary full quote

[kornchild2002]

What about reliability?

What reality? Microsoft not updating an encoder for a long period of time is not reality in any way, shape, or form. Additionally, if you examine the hardware market, both mp3 and AAC have more support. The portable player line that holds over 60% of the market is made by Apple and they don't support WMA. Even my Droid X (running Android 2.3) doesn't support WMA when it comes to making ringtones yet mp3 and AAC are fine for that. Just last year, I purchased a Blu-ray player with a front USB port. It works with mp3, mpeg-4 AAC, and PCM WAV audio files but no WMA.

So where is the reality in using an extremely outdated encoder that isn't supported by the majority of the DAP market (and has dwindling support outside of that)? People use different encoders/formats for different reasons. That's fine and people should use whatever works for them. However, that doesn't mean one can use flawed reasoning to reach their conclusion.