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. What are WAV and WAVE files and how do I open them?ĭeveloped 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.The format uses containers to store the audio data, track numbers, sample rate and bit rate.

It was originally developed by Microsoft and IBM and stores uncompressed lossless audio which results in very large file sizes. One minor drawback is that the file sizes can be huge which can make them a little impractical.Ī file with the WAV file extension is a Waveform audio file format and is a container that stores data in segments. As they are stored in an uncompressed format they are enormously versatile and allow for easy editing and manipulation. It was originally developed back in 1991 for use within Windows 3.1 but today it is the gold standard in studio recording and one of the most popular digital audio formats. 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.The WAV file is one of the simplest digital audio file formats. 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. 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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