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In other words, that means it removes the information that your ear doesn't notice thereby making the file smaller. Instead, MP3 files use perceptual coding. That means that an MP3 file does not contain 100% of the original audio information.

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This then enables you to get hundreds of songs on to a CD and it also has opened up a new market over the internet - the download market as download times have been significantly reduced. MP3 gets rid of a lot of the information recorded in a song that our ears are not able to hear and then uses complex algorithms to reduce the file size. MP3 is a digital music format which allows CD tracks to be reduced to around a tenth of their normal size without a significant loss of quality. WMA format information from the Library of Congress.Differences between ASF and WMV/WMA files.

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Encoding Audio and Video with Windows Media Codecs.

Finally, WMA Voice is a lossy codec optimized for low-bandwith voice playback applications, with mono sampling support up to 22.05 kHz - it is perhaps most well known for being used by the BBC World service for streaming Internet radio. WMA Lossless is designed to compress audio signals with no loss of quality from the original source (up to 96 kHz) and is used in some Windows Mobile devices as well as the Logitech Squeezebox Touch.

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WMA Pro is an improved version, allowing sampling up to 96 kHz, but has achieved little hardware and software support. Every WMA file contains an audio track encoded in one of four mutually distinct codecs - WMA, WMA Voice, WMA Lossless or WMA Pro - WMA is the most commonly found of the four, but is a lossy codec, with the ability to encode audio signals sampled at up to 48 kHz. In almost all circumstances WMA files are part of the Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container, a proprietary container format developed by Microsoft for both digital video and digital audio.

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The original codec was targeted as a direct competitor to the MP3 and RealAudio formats, and has achieved a broad level of adoption thanks to support for playback on numerous DVD players, Nokia mobile handsets and Playstation portable devices.

Creation of WMA files did not come until Windows Media Player version 7. The principle of compression is to reduce the accuracy of some parts of the sound stream, which is almost indistinguishable to most people's ears.Developed by the Signal Processing Group at Microsoft, the WMA file format is part of the Windows Media framework and was first released commercially in 1999, with support for playback of WMA encoded files as part of Windows Media Player. MP3 files can be created with high or low bit rate, which affects the quality of the resulting file. Despite the fact that, due to the age of MP3, today it does not shine with compression efficiency, its popularity remains very high due to its versatility - the extension is supported on any operating system, a lot of both standard and specialized multimedia software plays this file format. Other advantages of MP3 include excellent compatibility with various programs and audio devices. Compared to lossy files, MP3 songs take up much less disk space thanks to a special algorithm. The emergence of the MP3 format was made possible by the joint efforts of a development team of almost 40 people who have been working on the project for several years. Popular compression and lossy format with small file size and far from the highest sound quality.