What's better, MP3 or WMA?

[Mike_Minh]

What's a better sound file? a MP3 files with 320 kbps or 320kbps WMA? What's better, CBR or VBR?

[MOVIEGEEK]

IMO WMA9 sounds better than MP3 at bitrates below 192kbps,above 192kbps it's a draw.VBR will give better results than CBR but ABR(Average BitRate-used in MP3) is best.
Here's an audio forum: www.hydrogenaudio.org

[thayne]

MP3 because it's not Micro$oft!

[Cecilio]

the user before this was probably a mac user huh figures and then hes going to say i have windows na na na. honestly WMA 9 is way better. you can get very good quality with 64 kbs with WMA 9 which would be equivilent to 128 MP3. 128 WMA is equivalent to 192 MP3 and anything in MP3 thats over 192 sounds the same. VBR will always be better than CBR quality wise im not talking compatability wise.

[EddyH]

WMA superficially sounds better until you actually *listen* to it rather than just *hearing* it. OK for pop but you wouldnt archive with it. It does evil things to fake out the apparent extra treble range and lower-end fidelity it has over similar bitrates of Mp3 (similar to what mp3pro does.. equally naughty). Plus, it's nowhere near as compatible, even in the modern day theres far more products play mp3, rather than 'mp3 and wma'.

Plus the encoders aren't really evolving much (no competition for one thing, and too long between releases - if they're further developed at all since the original) unlike mp3 which has at least two or three different models going along - lame (excellent for mid-to-high bitrates, esp VBR) and frauenhofer (good at lower CBR bitrates without losing too much quality) to name but two. Get a decent mp3 encoder that matches your needs, you'll be fine.

Oh yeah, and all those horrendous copyrighting issues with WMAs. Make anything using it in media player, you wont be easily sharing it with your friends or over a LAN/internet/copying to your other computer any time soon without ripping it a second time - to mp3.

[thayne]

the user before this was probably a mac user huh figures and then hes going to say i have windows na na na. honestly WMA 9 is way better. you can get very good quality with 64 kbs with WMA 9 which would be equivilent to 128 MP3. 128 WMA is equivalent to 192 MP3 and anything in MP3 thats over 192 sounds the same. VBR will always be better than CBR quality wise im not talking compatability wise.

Yeah we'll see who who's saying na na na when M$ fully implements DRM and you can no longer access all your wma's....

BTW I use a P4 with Win XP.....

[MOVIEGEEK]

EddyH wrote:"WMA superficially sounds better until you actually *listen* to it rather than just *hearing* it. "
What?
I'm no audiophile but after listening and hearing WMA9 encoded at 128kbps CBR IMO it is CD transparent and equivalent to MP3 encoded at 192kbps CBR.

[DivXExpert]

I am gonna have to say lame mp3. But I encode all my files with --alt-preset extreme, and they really are transparent, even on great stereo systems it sounds great.

"Are you interested in finding out on your own, which audio format sounds best to your ears? Then don't hesitate and take the 128kbps Extension public listening test where you can compare QuickTime AAC, Lame MP3, Musepack, Ogg Vorbis and Windows Media Audio v9 Pro."

http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/test/128extension/presentation.html

Listen for yourself and see which you like better.

[DivXExpert]

WM9 128, and MP3 192, are not transparent.

[DivXExpert]

At 320kbps on MP3 or WMA, you are not going to be able to tell the differece, both are transparent at that bittrate.

[vance43211]

At 320kbps on MP3 or WMA, you are not going to be able to tell the differece, both are transparent at that bittrate.

they both sound superior to anything else out but cd.

if you a/b test them you will hear better sound from the cd

but if you don't

most people will be hard pressed to tell the difference

[Cornucopia]

If you worked with them day-in-day-out like I do, you'd be able to tell the difference.

There's actually a lot of choices out there, just depends on what you want to do with 'em.

Scott

[tgpo]

If you listen closely on MP3, esp to the background sounds you can typically hear compression. I have some MP3s encoded with 192 and you can hear the compression. Even when the bitrates climb above the 200 mark I still hear compression in the background. While the foreground/main music sounds fine, it's the loss of the background sounds that keeps the songs from ever sounding as good as the CD.

[EddyH]

Moviegeek, depends on your ears maybe, range of hearing etc, both frequency and sensitivity. The treble in WMA sounds a bit nasty, as it does in MP3Pro, as they just replace all of the sounds above a certain frequency with a single broad band noise souce that seems half related to the actual preexisting treble, and half extended from the lower frequency sounds, like what happens in a bad sampling rate converter. Yuck. It's on a similar-but-different ugliness level to MP3 encoders that have a dodgy ATH curve above 13k / 16k and end up with lots of squelching / twinkling. Difference being, that's not an endemic MP3 thing, and you can always get a different encoder. Those such as lame may cut out some of the treble or 'blur' it in some way at lower bitrates as well, but do it in a much more intelligent and effective perceptual manner that means it sounds better and closer to the original.
(i reckon, with my headphones on, i could tell you the difference between a wma or mp3pro, a duff mp3, good low rate mp3, and at a push, a good high rate mp3 (listening very hard) vs the CD... call me arrogant in that respect )

and blah blah blah. YMMV, a good mp3 just sounds better to me, bitrate wastage be damned. it all requires decent ear/headphones to detect or very good speakers unless the compression is really dire anyway, so those 128k mp3s keep on churning out.

and again there's all the software/licensing problems. if wma was half as flexible as mp3 i wouldnt dislike it half as much, as a 128k file with an equalizer running on it cutting off that noisy hissy treble sounds better than an equivalent 128k mp3 with a hard coded frequency cutoff at a lower band and slightly worse distortion. heck, if half the wma's i copied from a wmp-loving friend actually worked and didn't require recording my soundcard's "what u hear" line to wav in order to get a CD out of it, it would be better.

[pixel]

I would personally have to say mp3.

I have carried out countless tests to try and compress my audio as much as possible without losing quality but MP3 wins hands-down.

I also believe I can tell the difference between MP3 and WMA tracks.

If you listen to a typical song (especially punk) encoded in WMA and listen to the drums in the background they are almost completely churned up, however on a same quality MP3 this is non-existent. I would like to be proven wrong on this though.

What someone should really do is take a PCM audio file, compress it to 128kbps in mp3 format, and compress it to 128kbps in wma format and put it on their website. They souldn't say what format each is and let people vote for what they think is best, then tell them later what each was and see which format wins.

I guess it is all personal preference though.

[tgpo]

If you listen to a typical song (especially punk) encoded in WMA and listen to the drums in the background they are almost completely churned up, however on a same quality MP3 this is non-existent. I would like to be proven wrong on this though.

Cool. That's like I was saying, and what's funny is 2/3 of my mp3s are Punk songs.

[pixel]

If you listen to a typical song (especially punk) encoded in WMA and listen to the drums in the background they are almost completely churned up, however on a same quality MP3 this is non-existent. I would like to be proven wrong on this though.

Cool. That's like I was saying, and what's funny is 2/3 of my mp3s are Punk songs.

I was kind of saying it the other way around. I was saying there is lots of distortion on WMA but not so much on MP3.

BTW for punk music I would personally suggest bitrates of at least 192kbps in mp3's to keep as much quality as possible.
(I have tried 160kbps and that's OK, I have tried 128kbps and below and that is where bad churning up of the track really kicks in.)

[tgpo]

I've got some Less Than Jake that sounds fine at 64kb/s. But most of everything else is 128

[Gazorgan]

M$ always lies. They basically tell you that WMA/WMV is 'jsut as good' at half the bitrate. It's not.

A WMV9 at the same bitrate as a DivX looks marginally better, but seems to ahve a higher minimum bitrate despite being VBR video.

Now as to audio, I think WMA can be pretty dam good. As good as MP3? Depends on your speakers. I don't have cheap speakers on my computer, but to really tell the difference you need a really goood soundcard. 99.9% of you people don't have a 'good soundcard'. I'm talking bitrates of 192k (at 128k you can hear the compression, or see it if you like good audio programs) and higher.

I stick with MP3, because I don't like WMP as my player :P and hate the DRM issues involved if I don't have an internet connection on the computer.

[pixel]

I've got some Less Than Jake that sounds fine at 64kb/s. But most of everything else is 128

Some punk and ska is OK at low bitrates, but I tried putting the newest NOFX CD on my PC at 128kbps and the drums were badly churned up. (Can someone tell me if this is just an issue with the nero file encoder?)

[vance43211]

i actually have my soundblaster soundcard digital's out hook up to a sony str-s850 dolby digital receiver going to some Vandersteen Model 1 main speakers, a Paradigm titan center channel and Optimus Pro-X44Av rears

to me mp3 have a more natural sound than wma file (they have a harsh tendency, although if you encode at a higher bitrate it is not as bad)

i personally encode my mp3 at 320kb/s

although i got a friend who can encode them at a higher rate than that but he won't tell me how

[pixel]

i actually have my soundblaster soundcard digital's out hook up to a sony str-s850 dolby digital receiver going to some Vandersteen Model 1 main speakers, a Paradigm titan center channel and Optimus Pro-X44Av rears

to me mp3 have a more natural sound than wma file (they have a harsh tendency, although if you encode at a higher bitrate it is not as bad)

i personally encode my mp3 at 320kb/s

although i got a friend who can encode them at a higher rate than that but he won't tell me how

You friend probably owns an codec that can go to around 480kb/s or he's lying to you and using mpeg2 audio.

Personally I also think mp3 is clearer as the wma audio seems muffled (like the vids seem smudged).

[vance43211]

where can i get a codec like that

[pixel]

I don't know. Try a search in google.

Maybe try the fraunhofer site:http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/

But I didn't see anything for it there.

[NightWing]

WMA is nice if you are trying to squeeze as much music onto a mp3/WMA 256mb flash player for a trip. ( 135+ songs at at 20k at 22050 Stereo and one 2 hour radio talkshow )

At that level, it sounds like a 1969 Casettetape recorder but waiting for your next flight or on a few coast to coast flights even with the hickups makes it nice. Else its MP3 at 192 or better!

Be nice if they can get fractical encoding to do audio. The main item is what type of music or audio? Rock about anything including a rock would sound decent. Etc.

OOPS: Sorry the audio was at 22khz at 16bps.

[flaninacupboard]

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.

As for anyone who can't tell the difference between MP3 and CD? are you mad?
Vinyl is better than cd by a long shot.
HDCD seemes mildly better than CD
CD is better than ATRAC by a long way
ATRAC whips MP3's arse
MP3 has better detail at the same bitrates as WMA, but artifacts are more obvious in MP3 at low rates than WMA. low bitrate MP3 sounds awful, low bitrate WMA doesn't sound "bad" there's just no verve no vibrance and no detail to it.

This is the decision i made from the arse end of a pair of wharfedale PI-40's a custom set of copper bi-wire cables, a NAD C-370, a QED anniversary cable (of some kind, bought it a while ago) and a NAD c-541i.

I pissed off a friend of mine by pointing out i spent more on my TV stand/equipment rack than he spent on his multichanger CD player

[pixel]

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?

[Cecilio]

ok i encoded a PUNK song by the way which i HATE. the song is called Am I Still Waiting by Sum 41 and its pretty loud. i encoded it from the cd to 320 KB MP3. it sounds very good, but then i made it to - WMA V9 128 kbps CD-Quality Audio 24 Bit, Stereo It sounds perfect, just like the 320
it sounds pretty clear and very loud. now the MP3 i made it like this MP3 128 Kbps, CD Quality Audio. i encoded the songs using Video Vegas 4.0 by Sonic Foundry, which by the way is a very good program for audio and video, but pretty expensive. They both sound fu**ing good. i wouldnt know which to pick. whats all this i keep hearing about the DRM if its about the copy protection and licences, you dont have to copy protect your music. look at this. just open Windows Media Player 9, and then go to tools, and then options. then go to the copy music tab. if you notice, you see Copy Protect music is selected, just uncheck it and you should be good.

[DivXExpert]

flaninacupboard

Vinyl is king.
But you forgot reel to reel, also very good.

[vance43211]

flaninacupboard

Vinyl is king.
But you forgot reel to reel, also very good.

i agree there

probably because of the phrase distortion that it introduces

it make music sound more natural

it sound better than real life if you have the right equipment