Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

 Is it a good idea to rip my all CD collection in WMA Standard?

No, WMA standard is the worst format ever made available. Its only quality is to sound slightly better at very low bitrates compared to Mp3s. The only case you may want to use WMA Standard, is to fill in a portable device which only support Mp3 and Wma. To fit a maximum number of songs, Wma will be a better choice. In all other cases, avoid WMA!

 Does it make use of DRM?

No, and I don’t plan to change my mind! DRM stands for Digital Rights Managements, and is a form of encryption preventing users from playing their own music. That’s one of the worst ennemy of freedom and culture, don’t count on me to help propagating it.

 Is it possible to create WMA pro or WMA lossless files?

No, this encoder creates WMA Standards files only. This wouldn’t be really difficult to add support for these new Microsoft’s codecs, but I’m not willing to. I’ve written two encoders using slightly better formats, free, better supported: Ogg-Vorbis is a better choice than WMA pro, whereas FLAC compete against WMA lossless with no problem. WMA Standard is great to create very small files, and because it is [unfortunatly] widely supported by portable devices.

 Why isn’t there bitrate higher than 128Kbps?

That’s is simply because WMA Standard is already calamitous at 128Kbps, and even the good old Mp3 format performs very much better at 128Kbps and higher. WMA standard is a poor quality format, which sounds slightly better than Mp3s exclusively at very low bitrates (eg. <64Kbps). For instance, WMA may be useful to fit a lot of song files on a portable device having narrow memory. In other cases such as high bitrates files for PC jukeboxes, or mp3 players supporting better formats (eg. AAC/Vorbis), WMA is just useless: avoid it