@bdb wrote:
I originally encoded nearly everything at WMA, then moved away from it. It seemed to lack a “sharpness”, particularly with steel-string acoustic guitars. I’ll admit, that was some time ago (codecs may have improved), and I never did ABX tests.
I agree with saratoga; LAME MP3 is really at the top of its game right now, and multiple participants in ABX tests score it equal to AAC at bitrates above 192kbps. I’ve seen many people who thought they had “golden ears” humbled by ABX
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Ogg Vorbis. I had never really used it until the Fuze started supporting it, and I was pleasantly surprised.
At what bitrate for the wma? Codecs usually are optimised to work at a particular range of bitrates - they have sweet spots. Low bitrate wma sounds bad just like low bitrate anything does.
