About 4 years ago, I was told that MP3 files should be at least 128kps, when downloaded (back in the Napster days). WMA files seem to be getting more common now adays, I notice that a lot of them are usually at 64kps. Now if I am correct the advantage to WMA files is that they are smaller. Here is my question, sound quality wise what would sound better, an MP3 @ 128kps or an WMA @ 64kps? Or do they sound the same? Thank You

I prefer WMA files myself, I have 410 songs on one 700 meg cd. I converted my whole collection to 128k wma's. When I burn my wma disc's for my mp3/wma cd player I burn encode at 64k and they sound every bit as good as the 192k mp3's used to. It's really down to personal taste. I recommend ripping a cd or two as wave files then convert them to both mp3 and a wma files to see which you prefer. Hope this helps, Sandman

If you use Media Encoder you can see why the smaller file sounds soooooo much better. WMA doesn't clip the highs and lows off to make a smaller file. Wma uses user selectable settings to make a more compressed file with out sacraficing quality. Does a killer job on video files as well. It's a free download from MS. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...

While it's true that both the WMA and WMV codecs provide a great compression:quality ratio, I typically still go the MP3 and XviD route. Why? Because for a little extra filesize I can easily use media encoded with these codecs in any number of open source application. Both WMA and WMV are copyrighted by Microsoft and creating a decoder for them without expressed permission is illegal. If VirtualDub can't open it, I won't use it (as a first choice) :)