[Empeg-general] Re: ETA for WMA?

[iank@empegbbs-noreply.merlins.org]

>>ETA for WMA?
>Can you explain why you're so anxious about WMA? I thought >it is just a fancy rename of 'MS-Audio'. Am I missing >something?

In my admitedly subjective tests I have found that WMA when compared to MP3s encoded using Xing, Fraunhoffer or LAME comes out on top in the audio quality department. It encodes faster and sounds better, all IMHO of course. Right now I use 190 kbit MP3 on my EMPEG. I can get the same quality with 128kbit WMA, or even 96kbit in many cases. While the claims by MS that a 64kbit WMA stream sounds as good as a 128kbit MP3 is bogus, the codec does compress better.

I'd also like to stuff some audio books on the unit and MP3 completely blows for low bitrate spoken word. WMA does not.

All of this is of course my opinion.

And I don't care if there's MS code in my player. BFD, if their codec is the best (and so far it is) then that's the one I'll use as I refuse to use an inferior product just to make a statement.