I didn't know where else to put this. Hopefully it's okay to put this here. So I got a new MP3 player a week ago and have been playing around with it a little bit. It supports both MP3 and WMA formats. I have found that using WMA will allow me to store a TON more music files on it than if I were to use MP3. I am currently using dbPowerAmp to convert my MP3 files to WMA. The problem is I don't know what setting to use when converting these files as there are many options depending on how I want it to sound and/or how small I want the files to be. It starts out with something like 8 bit/8 Khz mono and goes all over the place from there. I ended up using something like 22 bit/22 Khz stereo and it reduced the size of my MP3 files immensely. The sound is fine I guess. I'm just curious what setting works best, what any drawbacks might be to using WMA, etc. Any thoughts?

Hi Jon, I don't know much about WMA, but in general, the more you reduce the audio quality, the smaller the file. M2 If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Personally I think its very comparable to mp3. You can reduce the quality of a MP3 file and make the file small as well. A good MP3 usually will be at 128bit @ 44hz in stereo mode. A 4 minute MP3 at that rate would be close to 4MB. If you create the mp3 at 64bit @ 22hz in stereo mode then I can assume it will be less than 2MB. Keep dividing it... the smaller the size. HELP DESK

In other words there are no free lunches. There is always a price to pay. I have read that WMA files are marginally smaller for the same quality. I would think that would only hold true if the file was created in WMA, as opposed to converting. Converting file types usually results in some loss of quality.

wma is mpeg - but a more advanced and researched compression algorithm. So yes, you should use wma/asf if you want to store more music at higher quality. Mpeg layer 3 is a very dated compression now. Alternatively, there are hacks available under pseudo names - such as OGG Vorbis (audio version of wma/asf) or DivX originally a hack of Windows advanced mpeg video compression wmv Keep with the times!