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billiam0878

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 15, 2002
299
0
Winter Park, FL
OK, so now that iTMS has some competition from buymusic.com, what are some of the differences between Window Media Player files and MPEG-4 files? (i.e. quality, size, etc. etc). Thanks!

Bill
 

jxyama

macrumors 68040
Apr 3, 2003
3,735
1
k, this has always bothered me...

"size"

unless my knowledge is severely mistaken, size of the file does NOT depend on the encoding format. it depends on the bitrate and length of the song...

bitrate: kbps - kilo-bits-per-second

a 1 min. song, encoded at 128 kbps will have 60*128 kb = 7680 kb = 960 kB regardless of the format, mp3, aac, wmp, etc...

the music quality will depend on the compression and bitrate. one of the things touted by apple about aac is that for the same bitrate, aac supposedly sound better than mp3 because it's a more effective compression scheme.
 
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