I do not like the attitude in this forum that WMA is some sort of inferior format. In fact if you take a look at the tests (http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html), notice how unfair they are. Notice the average bitrate - wma is 128 while ogg and mpc are 135.
My point is that with wma pro doing much better and Microsoft pushing this format hard and the DM support finding favor with record companies, wma can easily crush the mp3 revolution.

The only way to combat this is to develop OGG to be on equal par with wma (sound quality wise). pretty soon Microsoft will conduct its own tests (obviously biased) that will make them think wma is best.
- I am basing the above on some problems with OGG
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=18359
AND WHAY ARE WE not discussing problems with WMA on this forum?!!!
Are they any problems at all? Sure it might help microsoft a bit but it would show that their format has problems too.


What needs to be done is for fair tests to be made without discrediting wma. Increasing ogg support in hardware players would helpt too.
OGG is the only hope for consumers who want to be free from restrictions when ripping their music- and it has to be pushed..

Otherwise we will all be stuck with wma pro ,,,

Just my opinion ... By the way I hate wma simply because of the DRm thing....I'm sure everyone does. And it is ON by default in WMP contrary to what many Microsoft zealots say.

I feel no restrictions 'ripping' my music to LAME mp3.

I feel like lambasting yet another clueless newbie.

i won't respond

Another troll. 4 posts and he has the right to question the attitude here

sooo tempting to bite at this one...

but quality is only one of many factors that effects peoples choice of codec, even if wma had transparent quality at 128kbps i wouldnt use it due to its other faults...

WMA is not supported in open-source operating systems (ex. GNU/Linux, *BSD).
Thats more than enough reason for me to stay away. ..

Most of this ground has been covered before; use the search. Read this thread and figure out why it's in the garbage. This thread is also enlightening: "No Wma?"

I doubt that 7 kbps make such a big difference.



Why should we? Vorbis is an open source format so changes can be done by everyone, while only Microsoft has access to the WMA code.



What is so unfair in Roberto's test? The 7 kbps more in MPC or Vorbis? Come on... So even if you say that 7 kbps is much, fine, that shows that the encoders were smart enough to assign more bits without having a big impact on the file size.

WMA (especially 9 Pro) can be a competitive codec (quality-wise and filesize-wise) ... but it still is proprietary.

The biggest problem to me is that even modern DAP's refuse to play back the 9.0 Pro files so WMA is no option for me to use it on my portable.

While WMA may be a fair competitor in the sense of quality, I have to agree with most that it isn't anything special. For lossy music I'll use vorbis over WMA. I think what will eventually kill mp3 off is lossless compression, like FLAC and WavPack. Lossy WMA doesn't stand much of a chance since mp3 is already more compatible with portable device and operating systems. Some portables support WMA, but not all. I think all of them support mp3, I've not seen one that doesn't. But it's really a matter of choice, some people will use a format regardless of it being better or not.

What a bunch of BS.....

To the thread starter:

Read this and this to understand why the bitrate difference is not such a big deal.

The ogg testing page you linked (guruboolez's tests) does not allow us to draw any conclusions away from the classical music genre. Read the test conclusion again....

You might want to investigate things a little further before posting, otherwise you just sound like a troll....

Roberto's back with a vengeance

You can play WMA using mplayer or xmms (with the wma plugin) in Linux.

also lamip & bmp plugins

and a cli program, wma2wav (written by the xmms-wma author)


later

doesnt wma use less battery than mp3 at similar bitrates too?

You know that WmaPro is not the same as Wma standard, in the sense that a wma standard decoder (including the hardware players) is not able to decode WmaPro, don't you?

wma is a dirty format in many aspects....also it resides inside the asf container which allows scripts to be embedded and run!? from inside a simple audio file, what a piss off.

Also never forget what the W in wma stands for... all of the people I know that use wma do not know what wma is and what an mp3 is...

So unless you work at m$soft stay away from wma and in general from DRM

Not noticeably on my iRiver. (In fact I would be inclined to say the opposite)

It should be the opposite. WMA is a more complex format, just like AAC, and in the same way AAC drains iPod's battery faster (at the same bitrate) than MP3, so does WMA. I wonder why no portable player exists for MPC, which has so little decoding complexity...

Actually, WMA is very bad to decode, and I have seen many many many pops and artifacts when recordind CDs that I did not hear when listening in the PC. Then I stopped using wma!

Rockbox might add it to the iriver H1xx and h3xx series and neuros is on a good way there too.

This from Wired:

I wouldn't be so sure about it.



On portable players with moving parts (CD players, HDD players), the decoding complexity makes nearly no difference on battery consumption. By far, most of the battery is used by servo motors.

The decoders can be optimized to give very good battery performance even on these "new" formats.

That's what I've said all along, but everyone disagreed. what gives?

qualityequalizer hasn't even responded back ...

I'm confused here because I have seen quite a few people saying that they get half as much battery life using OGG instead of MP3, is this true?

Depends on the device. On solid state iRiver players, I believe that is very possible, specially since the Vorbis library used by them hasn't been extensively optimized.

Classic troll behavior (by the original poster).

yes, that's true...ogg sucks even more battery than AAC

Actually, from what I read, Vorbis decoding complexity is about on par with LC AAC.

What sucks more battery than AAC is tremor, since it's nearly not optimized and the AAC decoding libraries have been extensively optimized.

But memory requirements are higher because of the codebooks. It you do not have much fast memory, you might have to handle frequent loads from your bigger slow memory to your tinny fast memory.

My girlfriend's portable MP3 CD player definitely chows down batteries at a faster rate with more "complex" encoding. There's a noticable difference between LAME APS and LAME 128 CBR.

That isn't at all what they mean by more "complex". What the other members have been discussing is the complexity of the format, not the size of the files. On non-solid state devices it is well known that bigger files = more HDD/CD access = more battery drain due to the devices internal motors.

Her CD player is always spinning, regardless of whether the media is an audio CD or one containing MP3's. I therefore think the diminished battery life, at least in this case, is entirely due to the additional CPU load of decoding the larger VBR files.

This may be obvious to most, but I think it's worth commenting on. I've seen too many people fail to consider battery life when deciding how to encode music for their portables.

I'd say that's the fault of the player (poor design) and does not have much to do with the codec.

In any case this thread seemed to receive quite some posts. I'd expect it to end up in the Recycle Bin. Or is WMA taking over??

WMA ist Death! OGG ist Savior!

I'll informally test out my Nokia 6230b's music player with ~128kbps AAC files vs. 128kbps MP3s and see how the battery life is. I've started using AAC files very heavily these days and haven't noticed too much a difference (in regards to battery life) on this device.

In fact, Rio modified Tremor significantly for the Karma for that very reason - earlier firmwares used standard Tremor and the penalty for playing vorbis was large. Allegedly, it still sucks a fair amount more battery at similar bitrates compared to mp3, but I haven't personally tested it and I don't know how significant the difference is (I've only looked at my battery life with higher bit-rate vorbis compared to the 15-16 hours it is known to last with 128k mp3.)

When I get mine fixed, I may do a test to find out how big a difference we're talking about.

- Troll -

Besides, get an own avatar instead of stealing it from other members.

Maybe such obvious threads should be closed automatically by mods (after a report has been sent), the thread-starter warned - and, when repeating it, be banned.

- Lyx

I feel guilty ! My new smartphone is running Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition 2003, and can only play MP3 and WMA. As i dont have a bigger storage card than the original 32 MB coming with the phone right now, i converted my favourite songs to WMA 64 kbps to at least have some music with me ....

Some of them here have used words like dirty and all for WMA format
what i say regarding them is that they have not worked on WMA and know's
about WMA.
I am working on WMA and as far as the market is concerned every order
we get includes WMA9 as one of the specs in the PMP segment.
I suggest people to consider WMA coz at 128kbps it provides better compression than MP3.
I think WMA9 is here to stay ......

In-deed

Edit: of course WMA is here to stay, but only because it has all of Microsoft's marketing muscle backing it. If it was backed by a smaller corporation (<cough> Yamaha) or just a group of independent developers, it would be dead already.

I also suggest you to consider again this statement, by comparing WMA9 with an optimal MP3 encoder (as lame).
It is true that WMA9 is very competitive against poorer (which are often very fast) mp3 implementations. But good mp3 encoders outperforms WMA at 128 kbps. See Roberto's collective listening tests.

I have some doubts that WMA9 is here to stay, because I don't think it got here in the first place.
I yet to meet anyone who used it.
I can't see Microsoft continue to flog a dead Horse, when It's easier for them to continue selling WMA as better than MP3.

Maybe someone should start some kind of awareness campain? None of my less techy-minded friends even know what an audio codec is. Basically they use whatever their download service or media player (that would be WMP or iTunes) shoves down their throats by default.
If they run into some DRM restriction they just think their computer is malfunctioning, which they dismiss with some kind of "nothing to be done, computers are like that" attitude. If something really bugs them they come to me, but I can't crack WMA either... Conclusion: I'm an idiot

I don't believe it. Are you sure you're not mistaken? AFAIK, if CD player is capable of decoding an MP3s, it has enough cache to not to spin all the time. Or at least, you must shake it constantly to make it spin without a stop.

yep, the mp3-CD players I've seen so far only spun up every 15 minutes or so...

From what i heard, comparing the two (I will ABX when i have the time) I could pick out the mp3 very easily (up to 320) from the original while the WMA was nearer to the original.. My personal preference is wma for sound quality. But the DRm thing is a problem..

I am not pushing the wma format just trying to be neutral. Obviously many in this forum think that a few listening tests with people who are not aware of mp3 artifacts will prove anything... I can pick out mp3's quite easily but I am not aware of the wma artifacts *which i am sure do exist - i just don't know what they are*

Anyway, all I wanted was a proper discussion of wma artifcacts and quality vs the other formats - (other then the listening tests which i have seen). Maybe I am new here but i was able to find discussions on mp3, ogg and mpc problems in this board. What about wma? It would be useful, don't you think?


And I don't use wmas much either mainly because of the DRM thing ...

I've seen one proper listening test with 192kbps wma standard (in sound & vision magazine), and they said it was not that much better than iTunes mp3 @192..

In other words, not really great

If you want to be taken seriously at these forums you must first conduct an ABX, or perferrably ABChr, test. Then provide the test results and the sample you used for testing so that others can verify your results.