Which is Better: WMA or MP3?

The biggest question when formatting newly recorded audio is the WMA/MP3 question. As a musician and former home recorder, this question always bothered me a little bit. So the biggest question really is what are the advantages and disadvantages of both? The second biggest question is what software is available out there for both? We'll answer both for you.

The WMA attractiveness comes from Microsoft's claim that this format is the most accurate audio format available to date. The Windows Media Audio (WMA) format is definitely bulky enough to back up this claim. Recordings of the same clip in WMA format will nearly always be larger than those of MP3s. Microsoft has tried to make up for this my having the WMA format play at a higher bitrate than MP3s. That is- make it go faster. A lot of people still aren't convinced.

MP3 or MPEG3 stands for Moving Picture Experts Group-Layer 3, so yeah, MP3 works much better for marketing purposes. The idea behind MP3s was to make the files themselves smaller than WMAs. They do this by eliminating the audio range that has been deemed inaudible by the human ear. This greatly reduces the space needed for the audio file and enables more music or audio files to be stored. Currently MP3 files are used mostly in MP3 players for purchased and pirated- amen- backed-up music files.

Looking at both WMA and MP3 files on the same audio player you have to wonder which one will sound better and the answer is, it's hard to tell. A lot of this depends on your player's capability. WMAs sound better than MP3s at the same bitrate, but the average person will not be able to tell the difference unless they really concentrate. So that's no help in deciding things at all. So you can eliminate bitrate differential from our argument here.

MP3s store better because they are smaller. This is not to say they are THAT much smaller, but they are. On a very limited hard drive such as an audio player, this can be the difference between 400 songs or getting a full 600. So MP3s win in that department and it shows as they are the preferred music format for most people. For recording and computer things, WMAs have been the standard as they retain digital source better and hard drive space on a computer is generally not an issue.

As to whether your MP3 player will play a WMA, the answer is "most likely yes." There's no reason why most will not. The thing to consider is if you want a lot of WMAs and MP3s on the same device, it won't hurt anything, but things can get kind of weird. It's a personal choice really. Hard drive space has increased a lot since the first generation of MP3 players were marketed, so space isn't an issue anymore, but still, sticking to one format is a good idea.

Converting WMA to MP3 or vice-versa is a step you can take to make sure all of your audio formats are the same. The software for these conversions is easy enough to find, though depending on the file size and your PC's processor can take a little time. Remember though, the more you convert the worse the audio quality will become. There will always be a bit of quality loss when converting.

So overall in the war between WMA and MP3 format we'd have to go with MP3 for size and not much of a drop-off in sound quality. However for musical projects WMA seems to be the preference as the range of audio frequency is higher. I think like most other formats, each serves a purpose, but unless you're a musician, serious music lover or have the ears of a canine, MP3 will serve you just fine.

Zeeman Haus enjoys writing articles online on a variety of subjects. You can check out his latest website on Touch Screen Mp3 Players which provides top deals on touch screen MP3 players From Creative Labs, Coby, Visual Land and more.