According to this article it is. . .

"Microsoft had just released Version 9 of Windows Media Audio, and earlier testing had assured us of the codec's capabilities. We settled on a 96-kbps constant bit rate for the broadest possible compatibility versus the variable-bit-rate option, which we estimated would give us equivalent quality to MP3 at 160 kbps with most music types."

Read it Here

Think I'll continue to trust my own ears, thanks.

That is some very good news: They are no claiming twice the mp3 efficiency anymore.

Previously, Microsoft was claiming that 64kbps wma = 128kbps mp3.

They probably made their tests with Xing

Xing enoded files to 160k would easily beat wma@96

So according to them, the quality of their codec has actually gone down.

Don't get too excited; it seems they are saying 96kbps wma vbr = 160kbps mp3 cbr. That's a very bold claim.

I see the misconception that Xing is a very bad encoder is still rampant here. :B

If you want to talk about shit, mention Blade, QDesign, dist10... but not Xing.

I remember a test that compared these codecs, and dismistified this claim. It's still avaiable?

Here you go:
http://www.rjamorim.com/test/mp3-128/results.html

It's worth mentioning that test uses an old version of Xing, from when it was still developed by Xingtech, and it reportedly became much better after it was bought by Real. I repent quite a lot that I didn't test Real's latest version. in my defense, I can say Real Player was being misbehaved and refused to install on my system.

Xing garnered a bad reputation because it didn't use short blocks, methinks.

Xing's VBR technology seems to have disappeared in Real's mp3 encoder.

Yeah, its really interesting to see Xing close to Fhg. This test uses the old Xing version, and, AFAIK, all the xing critcism started since r3mix.net. I remember everyone saying "stay away from xing". This became a kind of rule for so much time that people forget the improvement made into the codec.

doesn't Xing cut everything > 16khz?

The version I tested didn't use them either.




You might need to install an MP3 update first, though...



If it does, people saw that as an advantage

I haven't heard of AActive, but it performed rather well in those tests (particularly as a CBR encoder).

Albiet it ended up with the highest average bit rate overall :/

Weird then that in the multiformat 128kbps-public-listening-tests that "Lame3.96 -V5" actually beat WMA9 when they were both at 128kbps.

True. But in Microsoft's defense (heh), one could claim they used another MP3 encoder. Maybe Blade, or iTunes, or even an old version of Lame. I remember they had a WMA comparision up where the MP3 files were encoded with Lame 3.6x or something, that was completely deprecated at the time, versus WMA's latest version.

I believe it did, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I used xing for quite a while and was quite happy with the quality... until I discovered LAME of course.

Yeah, that's why I was really glad to see the comparison of the the up to date codecs in your public listening tests. It was just the information I was looking for as I recently got a cheap portable mp3 player that only accepts either mp3 or wma.

Since I only want to use 128k on this player I was seriously considering WMA, (mostly because I'm always hearing those stories like the above about how great wma is), but after seeing those listening tests I'm more than happy to stick with lame and use -v5 for the portable.