..." Lady Day Box Set 96k wma (= 192k mp3) ..."

I found this guy posting some songs at mp3 groups(where
wma are OT and forbidden!!), and he says 96 wma is equivalent of 192 mp3!!!!!
How people can still be so stupid and believe in all
that big companies bla bla bla?
Even at higher bitrates wma is bad, no way to compare
to lame encoded files.
I've tried to show and guide them to read and listen about
quality compressed files, but in some cases, is waste of time.
LIF

Blah, why use WMA at 96kbps? Everybody knows WMA@64 is already CD-quality.

Serious: Yeah, that's the way it goes, LIF. At least, it seems you found some users that were willing to listen. Most of them don't care for reason - and keep spreading misinformation around. (P4n05?)

Good luck, crusader.

Regards;

Roberto.

Hi,

I first started propaganda in the a.b.s.m by putting detailed infomation in the REQ: posts that I wanted. However, I got many agree replies and only a one or two positive. People say that they "first wanted to encode but after reading how I want them to encode" they "no longer willing to do anything" - frustrating

However then I decided to make more people use -aps in the other way, I post my own rips where I write "LAME 3.XX --alt-preset standard - HEAR THE DIFFERENCE" and then SEE NFO where I give more explanation. And after that I got quite a number of e-mails thanking me for info and that they indeed hear the difference.
I may probably claim that I was one of the first to use explicitly --aps in the a.b.s.m (if not the first) and now you can see that more and more people started using it.
However a myth of "LAME/192K/TRUE STEREO" or "-V0 -h -m j" is still very strong and people use them no matter what, what's more frustrating is that a lot of "release groups" use FhG and very proud of "FhG/192k/True Stereo" - and here quality goes to hell

Also these "LAME/192/TRUE Stereo" would be ok if people used them straightforward, however as I just recently discovered for myself most of these people use filters to cut off everything above 16khz... lamerz....
So since I can see that my attempts to convert at least some people are quite successful, I think it is better if more people would post files encoded with -aps but then explicitly stating in the message headers that they did this. This way more people will be able to compare and hear quality differences.

BTW. Very nice to see my headphones now in the logo of HA Probably best purchase I've did in many years.

The worst format I've ever seen is WMA. The quality is terrible even at high bitrates. Microsoft says WMA8 is CD quality at 64kbps. It's a BIG lie. The biggest ever for a big company like Microsoft

Realy bad Microsoft!

the bigger the company the bigger the lie... this is really true when we talk about microsoft

Agreed, I think .WMA is terrible. Even worse than RealAudio at low bitrates. At *really* low bitrates (like 48kbps stereo or 24kbps mono) even MP3 (Fraunhofer) beats it greatly... at that bitrate it sounds totally distorted & metallic, like R2D2 trying to make a speech.

(to be read in good humor)

Such an easy target, a large corporation. It takes such enormous intelligence to slam it. Seriously, why not beat-up your dog instead - at least it's more personal, more personality-revealing, and the possibility for creativeness is much greater. (cough).

WMA is useful in some cases. So sue me. I use a CF card flash player on occasion (when I'm not using the AJBR20 crammed full with insane and extreme preset lame mp3s), and filling the card up with 64 or 80 k mp3s would make less sense than filling them up with 64 or 80k wmas. Period. They just sound better.

I didn't say they sound good. They don't. I didn't say anything about cd quality. I said they sound better than equivalent sized mp3s right now.

Considering the expense of said cards it makes sense.

So I put a few high quality mp3s (extreme preset lame 393 alpha 2) on a card, then cram the rest with wmas for when I listen in ambient-noise surroundings, like on a bus, or on a busy street.

Life is full of compromises. it's not a black or white world. Nex

I think all that .wma bashing is for mainly two reasons:
1. It's from Microsoft
2. The 64kbit=CD-Quality lie
WMA is definitely superfluous today (other formats like mp3pro are better at this bitrate, some are free), BUT: WMA is far superior to classical MP3 at 64kb (and lower IMHO), and I think the quality is still comparable to Ogg -q0 (target bitrate 64kb).
It is a good thing, that MS isn't controlling the audio compression on the net with wma, but objectively, the format isn't as bad as some people say.

There is so much spiel and bashing about WMA, from many people who do not even use it!

>At *really* low bitrates (like 48kbps stereo or 24kbps mono) even MP3 (Fraunhofer) beats it greatly...

Utter rubbish! unless you are talking WMA v2. v8 is much better, I have run tests at 64Kbps and to me it sounds the best by far than any mp3 encoded file at the same bit rate (from all 10 mp3 encoders). For those with portable mp3 players - if it supports wma, go with it as you will store more tracks.

Don't mention mp3PRO, or Realaudio as no portables support it (and only the RCA Lyras will support mp3PRO...eventually)

Wanted to mention one good reason to use WMA in original player build around RioVolt SP-100 which had 2mb buffer antishock was not the best part of the player
using WMA on the other had improved stability of playback. Like @ 80kbps when you
really can't hear the difference in the cheezy headphones that are supplied you get very good antishock, twice if compared to 160kbps MP3s (I don't dare to mention higher bitrates).
Another thing, that I liked a lot is that I can actually put 26 hours of music on 1 CD that I actually did when I coverted all my Queen CDs (around 40) into WMA64 or WMA32 when they were in mono. When I was testing LAME encoded MP3s vs WMA64 files in subway with the same cheap headphones - my conclusion was that is very difficult to hear the difference actually, it is different as soon as you reach the station and it is quiter, but otherwise not (RioVolts 100 didn't have powerful amplifier
so it was impossible to increase volume).

I did some tests to determine for myself which is better standard to encode music into @ 64 - I didn't compare any histograms - just plain simple - what I like most in the headphones. My results are like this:
OGG64<RA64<WMA64<MP3PRO64
So I liked MP3 Pro way better for some strange reason even though it had some parts played back worse than WMA64. Another thing I like about WMA standard in general is the speed on which it is encodes - when my friend asks me to sample him 1 track that I know he will delete in a day, I would encode in WMA since it will take me 20 sec to produce this track, if he asks me to encode a full album - then for sure I would use --aps.

Note: I tested OGG at some time after MP3 Pro was released (don't remeber when last year) - so may be now results will be different today.

BTW, does anyone know how to create a swipe sound from 10hz to 22khz, I wanted to test my hearing but don't know how to create it (plz send me a private message if you know)

Here, use this little frequency generator:

http://www.marchandelec.com/fg.htm

Regards;

Roberto.