Best Audio format (wma or mp3)?

[drspy00]

This is probably a silly question to be asking but I have had a Portable media player for a few months now and have been ripping all my CDs into a lossless format so i can convert them when needed to either mp3 or wma for the player,

I am wondering what the best format/settings out of the 2 would be to use on the player, im considering file size, quality and also battery use in player the files on the player.

I would appreciate any help.

:smile2:

[Deano]

Re: Best Audio format (wma or mp3)?

To save starting arguments, I will state only facts about the formats. The rest is entirely subjective, and really you should do your own listening tests to compare the two formats and decide which you find best. Personally, I don't like the .wma format much... but anyway, I disgress.

- WMA generally compresses better at lower bitrates. <=128kbps, WMA has pretty good compression.

- WMA can contain DRM schemes.

- WMA also has lossless, professional and speech versions of the codecs (although most standalone players do not understand these)

- On standalone players, WMA generally has lower battery life as it takes more processing power to decode a WMA. This is usually a number of hours less.

- mp3 format has widest support (although WMA isn't really far behind anymore)

[drspy00]

Re: Best Audio format (wma or mp3)?

Thanks for your help. I will probably just stick with mp3 like what I have always used for portable players, if the player supported ogg I would use that.