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Glossary
Glossary

WMA

(synonyms: Windows Media Audio)

WMA stands for Windows Media Audio. A proprietary audio format owned by Microsoft, part of Microsoft's Windows Media technology.

Initially intended to combat the increasingly popular MP3 format, WMA was supposed to be Microsoft's answer to digital music. With the massive influx of constant bitrate, high quality, low file size MP3s flooding the Internet, it soon became clear to Microsoft that they would not be a direct competition for the format.

Thats not to say Microsoft didn't put their heart and soul into development of this audio format. Its configurable to be cbr, vbr and lossless audio encoding for a wide variety of options.

Encapsulated in an ASF container, WMA has one ability that seems to attract more and more businesses and allows this format to stick around. Thats the easy inclusion of DRM or Digital Rights Management directly into the WMA file. This ASF container also gives the WMA two file options. (.wma for strictly audio and .asf for features simliar to ID3 tags in MP3s)

For more information, see the glossary definitions for:

AC3 AIFF ASF ATRAC3 Bitrate CBR CD Constant Bitrate DirectShow DRM DVD-MP3 ID3 Lossless Compression LPCM MP3 VBR

Related software tools:

Foobar 2000 v0.9.6.8 (Freeware)
Foobar is an advanced audio player for audiophiles

iTunes v8.2 (Freeware)
iTunes is a media player and organizer software for Windows platform from Apple that allows tight integration with the iPod players.

iTunes for Mac OS X v8.2 (Freeware)
iTunes is a media player and organizer software for Macintosh platform from Apple that allows tight integration with the iPod players.

WinAMP 2 Full v2.92 (Freeware)
De Facto in MP3 world - everybody knows this ultimate MP3 player.

WinAMP 2 Lite v2.91 (Freeware)
This is the basic version of WinAmp - all the features that its big brother has except support for certain audio formats like WMA.

WinAMP 2 Standard v2.91 (Freeware)
De Facto in MP3 world - everybody knows this ultimate MP3 player.

WinAMP for Linux Alpha 1 (Freeware)
WinAMP, the audio player for Windows, has been finally converted to Linux!

WinAMP for Mac v0.71 Alpha (Freeware)
WinAMP is finally available for Mac users as well! This is still an early beta, but it plays MP3s :-)

Winamp Full v5.56 (Shareware)
Nullsoft Winamp is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows.

Winamp Lite v5.56 (Shareware)
Nullsoft Winamp is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows.

Windows Media Player v11.0.5721.5145 (Freeware)
Windows Media Player is the official multimedia player from Microsoft. Player provides all the features of a modern media player.

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