Monday, May 31, 2004
A Crisis of Faith: Audio Encoding Formats...
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 10:58 AM
Ok, I have something to admit to all of you: last week I ripped a CD in...MP3 format! 8O That may surprise some of you because I've been an ardent supporter of WMA for several years now, and my entire collection of ripped CDs is in WMA format. I still think it's a fantastic format (more efficient than MP3 from a size point of view), but I get frustrated at compatibility issues. Now and then I run across applications that can't work with WMA audio - I was doing a big Photo Story project on my laptop last week and had Cool Edit 2000 installed for working with audio. I needed to edit a WMA file, and the software (which is a bit old, I'll grant you that - I didn't have Sound Forge 6.0 installed on that laptop) wouldn't open the WMA file! I had to burn the WMA file to CD, then rip it as an MP3 just to be able to work with it! Talk about a hassle.
I typically rip in VBR WMA format, and a few months back I took a CD with VBR WMA songs to a local electronics store - I wanted to get a new CD deck for my car, but it was important that it supported my audio format. Several decks claimed to support WMA, but evidently not 9 Series WMA VBR. Not a single deck, even the high-end Pioneer deck, would play the music on the CD-R that I brought in. If my music was in MP3 format, it would have played it just fine.
So what's a geek to do? Should I keep using WMA and focus more on seeking out software and hardware that works with WMA? Or should I switch back to the more compatible but ancient MP3 format? How do you approach this?
I typically rip in VBR WMA format, and a few months back I took a CD with VBR WMA songs to a local electronics store - I wanted to get a new CD deck for my car, but it was important that it supported my audio format. Several decks claimed to support WMA, but evidently not 9 Series WMA VBR. Not a single deck, even the high-end Pioneer deck, would play the music on the CD-R that I brought in. If my music was in MP3 format, it would have played it just fine.
So what's a geek to do? Should I keep using WMA and focus more on seeking out software and hardware that works with WMA? Or should I switch back to the more compatible but ancient MP3 format? How do you approach this?
