Originally posted by jakeludington
While Microsoft is still perfecting the DRM scheme for WMA on Mac OS X, the format is technically as good as or better than AAC at all comparable bitrates.
Honestly, who cares which format survives as long as I can play it on any player of my choosing. With AAC/Fairplay, I can listen to the music on any player, as long as it is an iPod. That's not choice.
Right. I forgot that it's Apple's fault for supporting a standard. Read it again.... It's a variation on an industry standard. WMA DRM formats are a variation on a proprietary format.
I'm going to guess that you can't hear the difference between and MP3 and a CD. If that's the case, lemme end your suspense and let you know that WMA sounds terrible. OGG is the only challenger to AAC, among lossy compression schemes. I'll say again, WMA sounds god-awful. If the world switched to WMA and I couldn't get around using it, I would encode all my music to AIFF and chew hard disk space to avoid mangling sound.
AAC/Fairplay won't work with my Rio Karma, or my Dell DJ, or the cheap flash-based player I take to the gym so I don't have to risk losing a $300 device in the locker room.
So use those and stop whining. Personally, I don't leave my iPod sitting around when I take it to a gym, but if you can't be asked to guard your possesions, maybe the more expensive player isn't for you. Sounds like you would rather buy a lot of cheap units than spend money on one quality player.
If you want the AAC format to thrive, don't blame Microsoft. Convince the powers that be at Apple to do a hard sell on other device manufacturers. Of course that won't happen. If other players supported AAC, people wouldn't buy as many iPods, because the could get a "good enough" player for a fraction of the cost.
Nobody is blaming M$ for AAC not taking off. What has been said, and what you should realize, is that AAC is an industry standard. M$ has created an inferrior (doesn't sound as good, remember?) compression scheme and has begun to move into a market where their help isn't needed. Don't kid yourself, this isn't because they think they can do a better job. They just want a bigger piece of the pie.
As for your bit about other players supporting AAC, you say it as if Apple controls the liscensing for AAC and can shut everyone out of the market to keep the format iPod only. I won't respond to this, other than to say that you should pay attention to the market. Oh, hell, I'll provide some links, too. (
1 ,
2 ,
3 ) These are without digging. But feel free to use a weaker compression scheme, pay license royalties to M$, and allow yourself to get locked-in to a format controlled by a company who is known for bullying distributors. It's the smart move. Really.
Dan
