# Difference Between wma and MP3



## dubya008 (Dec 13, 2006)

I now have an mp3 player, in the form of a chocolate cell phone, I have never had one so don't have any experience with them what so ever. However i have put some songs on the phone using Media Player and noticed that all of the files end with a wma extension. I could only get like 7 songs on the phone itself(the micro sd card is coming later)

Are these true mp3's? Should i get a converter to convert wma's to mp3's?


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

WMA and MP3 are both music compression formats. By definition, a WMA file can't be an MP3 file because they're two different file types. RAR and ZIP are two file compression types. A RAR file cannot be a "true ZIP" file.


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## dubya008 (Dec 13, 2006)

So in a broad sense of the word an MP3 is smaller than a WMA?


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## johnpost (Dec 18, 2005)

it all depends

there are many parameters that can be set when the
file is encoded like bitrates and stereo

so it depends on the type and quality of output
you want.

mp3 are more universal for playing


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## dubya008 (Dec 13, 2006)

I should probably get a converter then right? just becuase they are more universal for playing.


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

If WMA's work, then there's no reason to convert them.


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## dubya008 (Dec 13, 2006)

there could be a chance that the mp3's are smaller though right?


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## johnpost (Dec 18, 2005)

dubya008 said:


> there could be a chance that the mp3's are smaller though right?


 yes they could be depends on what they were encoded at as
wma files and what you want to encode at as mp3

mp3 are almost universal in being able to be played in
media devices or multimedia software so one in that
format they can go just about anywhere


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## dubya008 (Dec 13, 2006)

Okay. Here is a question then : Can media player rip music from a cd as an mp3? or always wma


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## Moby (Mar 19, 2002)

WMP version 10 and above can rip to mp3. Default is to wma so you need to go into WMP's options to change it.


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## dubya008 (Dec 13, 2006)

Okay that answers my question. I will mark this one as solved. Thanx to every that contributed to help me understand a bit more.


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## Moby (Mar 19, 2002)

When you are in the rip options you will see a slider to change the bitrate of your ripped mp3's/wma's. It is this bitrate slider which will determine the size of your files. The higher the bitrate the larger the file size but also the better the sound. So it's always a trade off.
To give you some idea, 128kbs bitrate mp3 is roughly equal to 1 minute of music = 1mb in file size with a usable sound quality. If space is an issue go with that, any lower and quality drops.


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## dubya008 (Dec 13, 2006)

> When you are in the rip options you will see a slider to change the bitrate of your ripped mp3's/wma's. It is this bitrate slider which will determine the size of your files. The higher the bitrate the larger the file size but also the better the sound. So it's always a trade off.
> To give you some idea, 128kbs bitrate mp3 is roughly equal to 1 minute of music = 1mb in file size with a usable sound quality. If space is an issue go with that, any lower and quality drops.


That is very useful


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