WMA better than AAC?

[octane]

Found this on Mac Slash::

saha writes "Jason Cross writer at Extreme Tech believes that WMA is the standard to support when it comes to DRM and has better quality than OGG or AAC . His sources point to the Microsoft website for WMA costing less to license and WMA being superior to MP3. Yet he makes the claim without providing empirical data that WMA is better than OGG or AAC." Now while Mister Cross has a few points worth taking: iTunes purchases only work on your iPod, but I think he's forgotten a lot in his latest article. Dig Deeper for more on Mr. Cross' commentary.

My personal experience of .wma-format media is that it's often noticeably poorer in quality.

But even in .wma _was_ better - as the author intimates - then I would much sooner ally myself with a poorer open standard than a better quality proprietary format.

And let's face it, in terms of audio, the audible quality of the vast majority of cd's ripped with the default settings within iTunes is sufficient for all but the most learned and seasoned ears.

But I'll let you guys decide...

 

[opatino]

I don't think so. I think AAC is better than WMA, because not only because of the audio quality, also the multichannel, dB and frequecy response, support for copyrighted material, and, probably the best, it is not "propietary" and it is not M$ ::ha:: .

 

[fryke]

For the future: Please adhere to the site rules about importing other forums' threads... But on topic: I guess the primary issues to consider when talking about which format is better are political ones, not audio-quality ones.

However, Apple has a double-edged sword at hand. They say AAC is the open format. Yet: Their DRM is closed. No access by third parties. This makes it very difficult for third parties to embrace AAC, because they can only offer DRM-less AAC or find their own DRM somehow.

Microsoft, in its typical fashion, just lets the format out. Creating a standard by themselves.

Dangerous creature, Microsoft.

 

[octane]

For the future: Please adhere to the site rules about importing other forums' threads...

You just don't give up, do you? What the hell is wrong with you?

No posting of arguments from other boards - We have plenty of quarrels here at macosx.com. We don't need to import them from other message boards.

Where's the argument? It's a debate.

No slandering the character of a board participant - Even if they are mentally retarded and were probably abused by their parents, you shouldn't be compounding their difficulties by publicly airing their personal problems...

You have my most sincere apologies...

 

[octane]

I am going to rise above this from now on, I'm not going to be swayed.

We are clearly made of very different stuff. Fryke, you're absolved.

However, Apple has a double-edged sword at hand. They say AAC is the open format. Yet: Their DRM is closed. No access by third parties. This makes it very difficult for third parties to embrace AAC, because they can only offer DRM-less AAC or find their own DRM somehow.

Microsoft, in its typical fashion, just lets the format out. Creating a standard by themselves.

There's a way to crack through this, and Real may offer that oportunity. Real and using the .aac format, but with a different DRM. Apple and Real could do much worse than work together to resolve the incompatibilities.

Dangerous creature, Microsoft.

The Beast of Redmond...

 

[Giaguara]

I personally find WMA crappy.

But I think this topic really needed the poll option, so here we go

 

[octane]

I personally find WMA crappy.

But I think this topic really needed the poll option, so here we go

I've been on a few sites that make use of .wma and I find them to be quite poor.

Now, whether this has anything to do with the implementation of .wma on a mac [black helicopters on stand-by for paranoid conspiracy theorists!] or whether it just _is_ poorer than .aac.

But the same can be said for .wmv, but that's for another thread...

 

[fryke]

Do you mean sites with high-quality .wma like online music stores? Or websites with .wma background tracks in low quality? I personally have not as of yet seen an implementation of AAC on websites (other than iTMS, but that's not really a website). But whenever _I_ have to put sounds online for everyone to listen to, I tend to choose MP3, as it's the most widely available format and can be put on any player I care about. ;-)

 

[Giaguara]

.. ps. keep calm.

 

[octane]

Do you mean sites with high-quality .wma like online music stores? Or websites with .wma background tracks in low quality?

Neither. My comment was ambiguous.

I meant music files I've picked up from various sources on the web or from friends pc's [my nephew uses some peer-to-peer nonsense, there's a good example, an unfair one to be sure]

I seem to always hear a dusty sort of vinyl-like scratchiness to sound...

 

[mindbend]

I neglected to answer, because the real answer is that it depends. I have done objective comparisons of high quality AAC and WMA files and they both sound great. I'm more used to AAC, so I'm more easily able to pick up on the subtle anomalies. So, in that sense, I can pick out flaws and thereby declare WMA the winner. If someone were to fore me to run a test using an A/B switch between formats, I'd have a hard time determining if they were both encoded well at high quality.

I receive WMAs from our musician in L.A. that sound absolutely fantastic. To say WMA doesn't sound good is simply not fair, because one could just as easily encode a crappy quality AAC or MP3.

My preferred format is AAC because it's an open standard, is integrated into OS X/iTunes and sounds really good to great. Plus, I refuse to give M$ any leverage if I don't have to.

 

[chemistry_geek]

Much of my experience with digital music is with the MPEG format. I read several years ago that MPEG-1 Layer 2 (MP2) was better than MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) as far as higher quality audio (verified with testing, oscilloscopes, etc...). The advantages with MP3 is different psychoacoustics and file compression.

Apple made a recent addition to the "Downloads" area called "iPod + iTunes" located here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ipod_itunes/

I found the Lame MP3 encoder as an iTunes plugin here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/ipod_itunes/ituneslameencoder.html

THIS WORKS REALLY WELL, and makes VERY high quality MP3s. Lame gives you much more control in the MP3 making process than iTunes ever will. The only problem with this Lame-iTunes plugin is that you can't be doing other things on your computer when it's creating high quality MP3s. If you do, your MP3s will have skips in them, and you will be importing them again. The other draw back is that since it creates higher quality MP3s, the import process is sometimes twice as long. I've made AACs of a few of my CDs and reverted back to the MP3 format. Something seems to be different or missing. I don't ever intend to purchase AACs from the iTunes music store because I want high quality audio, so I use it more for locating the songs I want so I can go to the local music store to purchase the real CDs where I can later make high quality MP3s if needed.

 

[octane]

To say WMA doesn't sound good is simply not fair, because one could just as easily encode a crappy quality AAC or MP3...

Which really is the crux of problem and the basis of any fair and proper comparison.

Any offers on performing a shootout?..

 

[RacerX]

It was well publicized before the final release of Windows XP that the bundled Windows Media Player would both encode and play MP3 files worse than previous versions to make customers want to use WMA instead.

Given that, no one requires empirical proof that WMA are better than MP3 in Windows Media Player on Windows XP... it is that way by design.

 

[octane]

Given that, no one requires empirical proof that WMA are better than MP3 in Windows Media Player on Windows XP... it is that way by design.

That aside, I was thinking more along the lines of a contest between highest quality .wma versus highest quality .aac rather than how Microsoft choose to let their software encode .mp3 or any other format...

 

[phatsharpie]

One thing I think Apple should've done with iPod and AAC from the beginning is to play up Dolby's connection with AAC.

Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) is basically Dolby's technology. Since Dolby has tremendous name recognition among the general public, by touting the AAC-Dolby connection, most people would probably automatically assume that it is a better technology when compared with WMA. Furthermore, people would like to think AAC is more "open". I'll bet many people, due to iPod and iTune's success thinks AAC stands for "Apple Audio ..." but if they realized that it's a Dolby technology, they'd realize it's a more open format.

-B

 

[Arden]

Poll seems a bit skewed...

 

[Stridder44]

I have to agree with phatsharpie here

 

[hulkaros]

AAC = Open Standard
WMA = M$

What are we discussing about here? Do we really need another method of control straight from M$

I would go anytime even with the plain old MP3 format if I had WMA as the one and only "high quality" solution...

*spits* to anything M$ related for personal usage *spits again*

 

[octane]

I also agree with phatsharpie.

But -- and this is only a guess -- might Apple have explored that option originally but backed away on the grounds of trademark issues?

Much like Apple dug there heals in with the Firewire name and logo until they loosened their grip a little [lot]

It certainly asks a very simple of obvious question of consumers: who do you go with? A proven format like Dolby or format from a company that has little or no track records in audio reproduction...