What's better, MP3 or WMA?

[RabidDog]

monkeys audio is a lossless compressor and is freeware. I got about 40% compression (100mb compress'ss to 40mb MAC file) however this is strictly for archiving audio as there is nothing that can play back this format natively... last time I looked?? good software tho
my 2c i prefer mp3 to wma as its supported by more mfr and you'r future proofed a lot better, plus it works on macs and linux and portables too. MP3 at 320k or as high as possible, VBR rather than CBR.
AND AS LOUD AS F**K! :P

[rafaelp]

The best sounding compression scheme i've come across so far is Atrac. at around 280kbps it's got enough bits to accurately represent the music, and because it's not designed with lower bitrates in mind (the LP atrac modes are a very recent addition) the audio model used is not as harsh as formats like MP3 and WMA.
If anyone is interested in lossless compression for archiving audio (or for use in an audio server, real time decompression is possible with these) check out FLAC audio and monkeys audio.

But remember that ATRAC was designed by SONY purely for minidisc recorders. There is no real use for Atrac because even with net MD's the software supplied encodes to ATRAC from other formats sends it directly to the disc and there is no way to upload ATRAC audio from minidisc players. So is useless for us minidisc users who want to put ATRAC audio on our PC.

You are right that Atrac is better than MP3, but LP mode isn't worth it (SP is fine) becasue it makes dual channel audio which means stereo audio is slightly merged together and not *true* stereo. I personally just keep all my MD's on normal stereo recording.

Have you got any links for the lossless codecs? Are they freeware/shareware?

I've never heard how ATRAC sounds. I use LAME, but you might find this public test interesting...

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html

[lenti_75]

geeeee, what a nice war.....

why don't you encode it on a VINYL CD ????? at 33 rpm ????? that is the best.

[flaninacupboard]

monkeys audio is a lossless compressor and is freeware. I got about 40% compression (100mb compress'ss to 40mb MAC file) however this is strictly for archiving audio as there is nothing that can play back this format natively... last time I looked?? good software tho
my 2c i prefer mp3 to wma as its supported by more mfr and you'r future proofed a lot better, plus it works on macs and linux and portables too. MP3 at 320k or as high as possible, VBR rather than CBR.
AND AS LOUD AS F**K! :P

When you install monkey audio it looks for a winamp directory. winamp plays them back quite happily

[miksu]

WMA may be better at low bitrates, like 64kbps, but must be moron to use such low bitrates. Space isn't premium nowadays and we have broadband connections.

With decent bitrates and encoder, MP3 sounds better. And every known player supports it. And it's not proprietary. It's been around so long that you'll be able to play it still in the year 2050. Wouldn't be so sure about WMA. When using Mediaplayer (Win XP Pro) for ripping CD's, it's irritating it keeps nagging about copyrights, when I'm using goddamn disk I have bought and I'am ripping it for my office-computer. Yet it rips into WMA, unless I obtain MP3 encoder and install it. Easier to say than do, since it requires administrator rights (this is public works dept. computer).

Take a look at Arstechnica or c|net, Microsoft is also losing it's DRM battle, which is WMA dependent. Macrovision and few others are interested in Apple's FairPlay, which is based on AAC, which in turn is part of MPEG4, which isn't proprietary.

VBR is of course better than CBR, it uses more bits where they are needed. And it's same for every format.

[miksu]

Everyone wants blood

Vinyl is 33 and one third (1/3), or 45 and half. It's almost one percent difference, which would mean whole spectrum is shifted slightly down. Why, oh why?! Bring us back the thirds and the halves(?)

By the way, WMA works on Mac, Windows Media player for Mac has existed since days of MacOS 9, or even 8.something.