Why do people use WMA? How does it compare to other codecs? etc., [split from “Windows Media Player 12 VBR Codec?”, thread 99192] Options

[eahm]

Pardon my ignorance and please, this is a real question: why people use WMA? I've hear many people using it and I didn't used once.

[greynol]

It's about as well thought-out as choosing wma as you primary lossy encoder.

[Mach-X]

It's about as well thought-out as choosing wma as you primary lossy encoder.

Ahem. While WMA Standard hasn't been updated in ages, wma pro is fully competitive with any modern codec for file size/transparency. Without providing actual results of extensive listening tests, it outperformed lame, autov vorbis and fhg aac at quality level 50. A user who tends to reside within the microsoft ecosystem would benefit greatly with wma pro as it plays on any zune device, xbox, windows phone or windows pc. It's not a horrible codec to utilize at all. It would seem as though we've exposed a chink in your bipartisan armour?

[DonP]

Ahem. While WMA Standard hasn't been updated in ages, wma pro is fully competitive with any modern codec for file size/transparency. Without providing actual results of extensive listening tests, it outperformed lame, autov vorbis and fhg aac at quality level 50. A user who tends to reside within the microsoft ecosystem would benefit greatly with wma pro as it plays on any zune device, xbox, windows phone or windows pc. It's not a horrible codec to utilize at all. It would seem as though we've exposed a chink in your bipartisan armour?

Aside from actual listening test it outperforms others? Good argument! The most recent mass test I've seen (Sebastian's 64kb/s July 2007) showed WMA-pro 10 within the uncertainty limits between Nero HE-aac and vorbis AoTuV 5. So, competitive but not outperform.

WRT compatibility in the Msoft ecosystem, they aren't great on maintaining that.

1) Msoft come up with a DRM scheme called "Playsforsure" for WMA, then dumped it when they came out with the Zune player. Best solution I saw from them to play any music you might have bought on your new Zune was to burn a CD, then rerip it to unprotected files.

2) I don't know all the details, but they updated the WMA pro encoder (from 9 to 10) in a way that older WMA pro players could only playback at half sampling rate. OK if you use WMP and just have to download an update. Not so good if you have a portable that doesn't get updates.