WMA Encoder Development Progress Until Now, Any continuous enhancement/improvement being made? Options

[Musafir_86]

Hello everyone,

-As we know, Vorbis and MP3 encoders (libvorbis/aoTuV and LAME respectively) are continuously being improved over time to make them better, more efficient and produce higher quality output files. Even AAC (FAAC) has somewhat being improved (courtesy of Nero; there's nothing much from the community on SF.net).

-The question: how about WMA? Is there any improvement to WMA3/WMA9 since WMP9/WME9? Do the encoders bundled with WMP10, WMP11, WMP12 up until Expression Encoder 4 (now) gradually increase the quality/improve their encoding efficiency? Any test (listening or ABX) has been done?

-Also, is there any (better) third-party encoder aside those from Microsoft that I'm unaware of?


Thanks & regards.

[saratoga]

-Also, is there any (better) third-party encoder aside those from Microsoft that I'm unaware of?

There are 3rd party WMA std encoders, but none are as good as the normal MS one.