WMA@64kbps = MP3@128? Is Microsoft on crack?

[Atropos13]

So I finally bought a portable MP3 Player (the Rio 800) and I decided to give the WMA format a shot since Microsoft has hyped it so much. Saying that WMA at 64kbps is as good as MP3 at 128 kbps. What a joke, I am not anywhere close to being an audiophile but if you can't hear all the echo and other distortion in the 64k WMA file then you need to get your ears checked. I have tried a few encoders so I know that isn't the problem.

I will say that it is good if I really want to fit almost 2 hours of music in my 64MB player, but I cringe anytime I hear a cymbol crash.

If I only had $600 to blow then I would get the 384MB Rio 800..... *drool*...

Long live MP3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[joohang]

Just like any form of marketing, they do exaggerate.

In some cases, 64kbps WMA can be = 128 Kbps MP3, but not always. It really depends on the type of music and everything.

At 96kbps+ WMA is very impressive. I had suspicions about it also but MS did a really good job.

The WMA 8.x version (in beta at the moment) seems to be quite promising too.

 

[JayPatel]

yes the new 8+ windows media codecs seem very impressive...particularily the video codecs

 

[madthumbs]

Ive read a review that indicated that wma sounds better than mp3 at lower bitrates, but at 128 it's just slightly worse than mp3. In otherwords wma is better for greater compression.

 

[joohang]

madthumbs,

I agree with that statement.

 

[Quickfingerz]

it depends on the MP3 encoder. I can't imagine a 128kbps JOINT STEREO LAME encoded audio file to be beat bya a WMA at 64kbps.

 

[madthumbs]

No, but both at 64kbps WMA would definetly be on top.

 

[esung]

I image VQF will have better quality then both at 64Kbps though.. but it looks like no one supports it(can't remember if Liquid Audio supports it or not. it's all Yamaha's fault)

 

[Quickfingerz]

How about 64 kbps Joint Stereo Variable Bitrate MP3 under the LAME encoder vs WMA at 64kbps?

I still think MP3 would go out on top (in most situations).

 

[PliotronX]

I can't wait for portable MP+ players :Q

 

[PliotronX]

Quickfingerz: it's been established that LAME is absolutely horrible with bitrates under 160Kbps. It kind of doesn't make sense that LAME kicks ass at relatively high bitrates, but is also one of the worst codecs for lower bitrates. On the flipside, Fraunhofer handles <128Kbps frames much better than LAME, and Xing is just plain disgusting. So the general rule (for yielding the best possible quality/size ratio) for encoding MP3s is small files = FHS, large files = LAME VBR or 256K CBR.

 

[Zucchini]

waiting for microdrives to get cheap... mp3 player market has been pretty stagnent. i got a rio pnp300 when it 1st came out, 32mb was insane.. players are still lousy now. 300+MB is what we need.

 

[esung]

PliotronX: what programs are using Fraunhofer codec? or is there any Fraunhofer codec floating around? I'm just a little curious...

 

[madthumbs]

I just ran some divx samples using the wma 64kbps in Flask Tsunami. I haven't been processing sound in Flask because for mp3 it was making the picture jerky, and didn't seem to size down to 44100, and I was using the VBR technique so I processed sound separately. But now I have the latest Open Divx codec, and tried the 64kbps audio with it. I got very good samples from it, and believe that for very simple encoding this codec is great (no coding 2 versions, or audio separately)! However this codec is very buggy (locked up when I hit the cancel button, and caused problems in editing software when trying to do VBR). I do think it's worth checking out. I'm planning on using it for the smaller movies. Being able to compress the audio that much and have it come out &quot;acceptable&quot; is very nice!

 

[madthumbs]

Well, that was a horrible mistake recomending Open Divx. After 9 hours of encoding a >2 hour movie I tried to play it back. It was full of frame freezes, FF playback sections, and audio way out of sync. What a waste of time. WMA will be a nice option when I need to shrink a movie down further to fit.

 

[Quickfingerz]

PliotronX:

where do you get this info from? i get my mp3 info from:

The best site for Mp3 info

LAME lately has been by far, the best codec. Don't look that the arstechnica article because it's very old and not up to date. LAME has better implementations of &quot;joint stereo&quot;, low bitrate encoding and most noteworthy, variable bitrate encoding.