from what i have read wma is smaller than MP3. although MP3 is more universal. i'm looking for the format that'll save me the most room on my hdd. if it is not either then what is it? also, does any1 have experience using CDex, i;m trying to convert my MP3's to wma but can't figure out how. please help. thanx in advance.
Yes, .wma's are smaller file sizes and are the same sound quality as mp3s. Why more people don't use them, I don't know. I guess it's because not that many people know about them. You can get a converter at www.download.com to convert mp3s to wmas. There are some better converters that can convert mp3s that are about 4meg down to 1meg without loss of sound quality. Thats actually why I was on here right now. I was looking for one of those converters.
The biggest reason I don't use wma is three fold. One, my home players and car players don't support the format. Two, with the phone home capabilities within some of the wma players on computers I don't like. Big brother is not my pal. Three, Always had a problem with Micro$uck$ trying to dominate the market ad take the lions share. There are a lot of good companies out there with good products that aren't around anymore because they could not compete with the giant that used its weight to push around the smaller guys. Without those smaller guys many of the market innovations don't happen because the big guy isn't forced to match up. So I guess you could say this is a con on wma format. Would suggest prehaps another hd for space.
You might want to look at musepack. Good quality sound, smaller file size compared to mp3 and no Microsoft built-in garbage.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=11936 Here's a recent quality test @ 128kbps. AAC, Vorbis, Musepack and WMA9pro win without significant difference between them. Note: It's not WMA9standard wich works with some portable devices but WMA9 pro. standard should perform somewhat worse, but probably still better than mp3 at this bitrate or lower. At higer bitrate (--alt-preset standard range) I don't know any tests but it will be hard to be better than "transparent on 99.9xxx% of samples to 99.9xxx% of people".
