Many users still remember those times when the main program for viewing video on a computer was the standard "Universal Player". It did not shine with functionality, and it did not differ in friendliness towards inexperienced users. It wasn't until 2000 that Microsoft released Windows Media Player 7 to the public.
It differed from its predecessor not only in convenience, but also in the fact that the WMA format created by the company itself appeared in it. What is it and where can it be used? As we already said, it was developed in the "dungeons" of Microsoft, where by that time they had already finally realized that they were unable to fight the victorious march of MP3.
Besides, their standard players did not support it adequately at that time, and therefore they were rapidly losing popularity. As a "popular" alternative, the WMA format was created, which since then has been "pushed" by hook or by crook into the Windows family of operating systems. Such a successpractice had little, and the very policy of the management of the Redmond company played an important role in this.
To start with, they made the WMA format completely proprietary - closed for distribution, modification and use in third-party products. And if this practice had a positive effect on their “Office” (after all, no one canceled the monopoly), then entering the multimedia formats market, which was already crowded with players, was frankly stupid.
However, the characteristics of WMA (Windows Media Audio) itself are not so bad at all. Thus, the manufacturer claims that a music file compressed in it with a bitrate of 160 kbps is in no way inferior in quality to an MP3 file with a similar indicator of 256 kbps. The statement is controversial, and its first versions did not support a higher bitrate, which made the WMA format not very popular among music lovers. In addition, at a sound frequency above 15 kHz, everything "extra" was mercilessly cut off, so there was no question of any "CD quality".
We must give credit to Microsoft: using their almost unlimited resources, they have achieved support for their offspring in almost all hardware and software players, so today the desire to change the WMA format to MP3 for playing it in your player has lost its relevance. Moreover, since the distant 1995, when its first version appeared, the codec has “grown up” to its ninth reincarnation, in which many errors of previous releases were corrected.
In particular, the sound quality has greatly increased, the possibility of two-pass VBR encoding has appeared, which automatically translated the "forever forgotten" WMA into the category of quite strong players in the digital sound market. In addition, the well-known and popular Winamp player can “rob” music CDs into it, for which only the out_wma.dll plugin is needed.
Thus, there is little point in converting WMA to MP3 format, because thanks to Microsoft's perseverance, this codec, along with competing formats, is supported by all devices and programs for playing digital music. In addition, as a result of such conversion, the sound quality may deteriorate significantly, which is unlikely to please you.
