WMA always sounds excessively "bright" to me. Is WMA known to overemphasize the midrange to make songs sound "crisper" to the average person (ala Bose)? Or are MP3s relatively "flat"?

Old WMA 7/8 has a metallic artifact.

I used to think they "sounded" different too until I did a few ABX tests and couldn't hear a difference...

How can we speak without knowing the bitrate?

Touche, I actually thought of that after making my post. I was referring to high bitrate encodes in the 192+kbps range.

I'm mainly referring to 192 Kbps WMA9 CBR files downloaded/purchased from online music stores such as Napster. But I also notice this "brightness" with high bitrate WMAs I've encoded myself. I recently bought an MP3 player, and put both WMA and MP3 on it and I think I'm hearing a difference. I guess I'll have to download Foobar and do a proper ABX test to be sure it's not my imagination.

That would be the best course of action, yes.

I downloaded Foobar2000 and ran an ABX test comparing a WMA and MP3 file I ripped myself. I ripped Audioslave's Cochise to WAV using Plextools 2.35 (had it lying around from another experiment with DAE) and converted it to MP3 using Lame 3.97 with preset fast extreme (minimum bitrate 160 Kbps) and again to WMA (quality 98%: all the programs I tried to use to convert to WMA only offered quality level, not VBR bitrate).

Here are the results:



I didn't really do enough trials to make it scientifically accurate but at this point I concluded that it was hard to tell the difference at best. When I thought I could tell the difference it was extremely subtle and I don't think I would have noticed during casual listening.

if you´re referring to portables, i also think, that wma sounds different. i can´t prove it of course... but i have the impression, that my creative MuVo 100 likes WMA more than MP3. to me, the wma files are sounding brighter.

but on my pc i can´t notice a difference (except the known differences)

I just enocded some songs using WMA VBR NORMAL. I've always thought that the sound quality of WMA might be a little crisper than MP3. However, it is really hard to discern in comparison tests. I do like the sound of WMA because, to me, it sounds very lifelike. I know people criticize WMA as being inferior compared to AAC and MP3. However, I just did a few ABX tests comparing the WMA files I just encoded to the original wav file (A Cindy Lauper tune). It was very difficult to tell a difference. I think there is a difference, but it is very hard to tell which is which. WMA VBR Normal often goes down to around 55kbs and the song still sounds great. I think people should give WMA more credit. It certainly does a good job for me in making encodes that are very pleasing to listen to and are virtually indistinguisable from the original.

All these newer codecs perform quite well at higher bitrates - especially for me, I can't ABX 128 kbit CBR mp3. It's all about personal preference.

Hi:

Personally I prefer the artifacts of WMA over MP3. Yes, WMA does sound brighter.

Speaking of which I have some questions about WMA artifacts.

I've already asked the first two questions before in a different thread. I hope no one is annoyed:

1. Why do WMA artifacts sound different from MP3 artifacts?

2. What is the mechanism behind WMA compression that gives WMA its characteristic artifacts?

3. Why does Adobe Audition allow a monaural WMA file that has a sample-rate of 44.1 KHz to have a bit-rate of at least 20 kbps but does not allow a monaural MP3 file with the same sample-rate to have a bit-rate below 32 kbps? Why is this restriction of what must be the minimum bit-rate [given that both have the same sample rate and number of audio channels] more intense for MP3s than WMAs?

4. Why is it that MP3s needs some amount of encoded audio in order to have any audio at all, while WMA can simply make its own audio? [To better understand this question, read below]

I have Adobe Audition 1.5 in which I do audio experiments.

Below is my first experiment:

1. I make a silent 44.1 KHz-sample-rate, 16-bit-resolution, monaural wave file that is 4 seconds long. [To do this, go to “generate” and in the drop-down menu click “silence”. A small windows pops up giving the number of seconds, I put it at ‘4’]

2. I save it as “silent.wav.”

3. I then convert this wave file to a 44.1-KHz-sample-rate, monaural, 20kbps WMA file -- “silent.wma.”

4. I close silent.wma

5. I open silent.wma and convert it to a 44.1 KHz-sample-rate, 16-bit-resolution, monaural wave file and save it as “silent.wav” again -- this overwrites the original “silent.wav.”

6. I then close silent.wav and then re-open it. Then I convert it back to 44.1-KHz-sample-rate, monaural, 20kbps “silent.wma” file [overwriting the original “silent.wma”].

After generating the silent.wav file I repeat steps 2-6 at least 4 times. Now when I play silent.wma I notice audio in the file that resembles the characteristic artifacts of WMA.

In my second experiment, I do the exact same thing, except I use MP3 instead of WMA:

1. I make a silent 44.1 KHz-sample-rate, 16-bit-resolution, monaural wave file that is 4 seconds long. [To do this, go to “generate” and in the drop-down menu click “silence”. A small windows pops up giving the number of seconds, I put it at ‘4’]

2. I save it as “silent2.wav.”

3. I then convert this wave file to a 44.1-KHz-sample-rate, monaural, 32kbps MP3 file -- “silent2.mp3.”

4. I close silent2.mp3

5. I open silent2.mp3 and convert it to a 44.1 KHz-sample-rate, 16-bit-resolution, monaural wave file and save it as “silent2.wav” again -- this overwrites the original “silent2.wav.”

6. I then close silent2.wav and then re-open it. Then I convert it back to 44.1-KHz-sample-rate, monaural, 32kbps “silent2.mp3” file [overwriting the original “silent2.mp3”].

After generating the silent2.wav file I repeat steps 2-6 more than 4 times. No matter how many times I repeat 2-6, silent2.mp3 still remains completely silent. Why is this?


Thanks,

Green Xenon

@Green Xenon: Questions 1 and 2 are tough to answer because WMA is closed source. I do recall someone commenting here that it lacks a psychoacoustic model, but I don't know how true that is.

Also Adobe Audition has been known to have some problems with handling WMA (Lossless) files, at least. There's a thread about it somewhere here in the Lossless section of the forums. This is lossy, but just bear that in mind.

Thanks.

In my post I was describing lossy WMA compression. The standard WMA.

BTW, why is it that MP3s needs some amount of encoded audio in order to have any audio at all, while WMA can simply make its own audio? [To better understand this question, read below]?