Poll: Poll:Mp3 vs WMA

[ss284]

I personally believe that WMA is the better format, and I encode at 64 for my nomad 2. yet when my friend listens, he says that there is a whine or high pitched frequency emanating at specific points in the song. I myself can't hear what hes describing, And to me 64 kpbs wma sounds about as good as a 128 kbps mp3.


Let me know your thoughts ok?
like what you encode at, and which sounds better in your opinion.


my main question is which one sounds better, I dont really care about digital rights and id tags. just the sound!


you can vote by clicking the little graph icon in the top right of each post!

thanks


-Steve

 

[konichiwa]

Vote: Vote: MP3

 

[ss284]

any particular reason why?

thanks,

Steve

 

[LocutusX]

MP3... because I consider the quality more important than the file size. I believe WMA suffers from poor stereo seperation unless you use 80kbps anyhow.

 

[xtreme2k]

I duno where I read this but WMA has been proven not to be able to give a natural sound even at the highest bitrate due to their compression method

 

[potz]

mp3... cuz microsoft will probably add content protection to wma one of these days...

 

[slpaulson]

WMA does have protection. A friend tried putting some WMA songs that he ripped onto his new computer and it wouldn't work, said you have to play them on the original pc.

 

[HomerSapien]

mp3 sounds cooler as a name...wma sounds like a disease..

 

[Biggs]

MP3 definitely. It's the de facto standard in compressed music. Ever heard of a portable WMA player?

 

[SuperKen!]

<< Ever heard of a portable WMA player? >>



No, but just about every portable mp3 player supports WMA files.

 

[ss284]

One of the main reasons I use WMA is because of its smaller memory footprint on my nomad 2.
almost all mp3 players that have come out in the past 6 months support WMA.

I get twice the music at negligible differences. As long as you use an unofficial wma encoder, you want get the annoying wma legal tagging.

-Steve

 

[Biggs]

Oh sorry, I didn't know that.

 

[Ausm]

Mp3's all the way

Ausm

 

[cookj]

MP3`s

 

[tomcat]

If my player supported it, and if I could magically turn my collection to WMA (I dont want to re-encode mp3s because they are already lossy) I would go WMA. WMA uses less space with very good audio quality. For DivX movies WMA at 64kbits is preffered over mp3 at 96kbits. Microsoft is on the right track.

 

[esung]

I have picky ears.. WMA just can't cut it. MP3 with VBR is the way to go..

 

[konichiwa]

MP3 because it isn't proprietary! Woohoo! Down with Micro$haft!

 

[Leo V]

&quot;MP3 because it isn't proprietary! Woohoo! Down with Micro$haft&quot;

My thoughts exactly I would never tolerate my music in a proprietary format! My server's 61.4GB disk accomodates all my favorite files in their original WAV format. If I must, I'll use 256kbps LAME-encoded mp3's. I'm holding out on portable players until they have enough memory for quality music.

 

[jrichrds]

MP3 has my vote. I didn't like the sound quality of WMA v7.
Microsoft came out with WMA version 8 beta a couple months ago, which had me hoping it would be better than WMA 7, but I read it's not that great either.

Anyways, I followed the MP3 encoding tips at http://www.jpopmusic.com/audiotech/
and have been happy using their &quot;Highest quality MP3 encoding&quot; option. Before, I was using AudioCatalyst to encode MP3s, and I can tell the difference in quality.
They also have a note about how they didn't like WMA8 beta, so I didn't even giving it a try.

 

[JellyBaby]

Only open standards for me, too. I will not buy music if I can't place it on any personal device as I see fit. Any copying restrictions on my current or future devices means no sale I'm afraid.

 

[BD2003]

WMA is great, and can save a lot of space, unless your song has any hi-hats or cymbals in it. WMA simple can't handle these sounds, and it comes out sounding like garbage. Cymbals are the roughest sound for anything to encode properly, high frequency and complex. Other than that (basically takes all rock songs out of consideration), wma sounds great, but only if youre trying to save space on a portable device. Not even wm8 sounds good with cymbals. Its almost insulting its so bad.

 

[Basse]

MP3 VBR @ 192 for me. WMA just doesn't cut it for me.

/B