S3/Diamond Rio 600 Review

That's how MP3 works, but what about WMA? WMA or Microsoft Media Audio is also supported in the Rio 600 by default. Why should you use it over MP3? Microsoft claims that WMA supports extensibility with functions that MP3 doesn’t, such as rights management and copy protection. However, the buyer of the player doesn’t care about that, smaller better sounding audio is what people want. Does WMA offer that?

WMA was brought in by Microsoft to rival the MP3 format, a tough battle for Microsoft considering how well established and accepted the MP3 standard is. In the production of the WMA standard, Microsoft had to avoid certain patented techniques that could enhance quality. The WMA standard uses a long set of continuous samples which means it's harder to code transient sounds, like a cymbal crash. Each window only gets one set of coefficients, so transients become blurred in bigger windows. Even so, Microsoft claims that a 64 kbps audio sample encoded using WMA is comparable to the audio quality of a 128 kbps MP3 sample. Quite a claim, which is why I decided to put it to the test.

For this series of tests there are several conditions to be tested and varied.

• Size of encoded file at 64 kbps, 96 kbps and 128 kbps
• Sound quality
• Speaker type

The size of the resulting encoding file is one the most important issues in the production of a compressed file; however, if the sound quality of a 64 kbps is as good as a 128 kbps file, then effectively the file size is smaller for matching audio quality.

To best test the quality of the compression in respect to both size and sound quality, I encoded two different pieces of music at various sampling rates. One sample from the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade sound track. I used this because of the very grand, full orchestral sound. Any imperfections in the music after encoding should be easy to pick up. For the second sample I used a music track from the GTA game to see how a louder, rock-type sample would react.

Test Platform
Athlon 'classic' 900 MHz
Abit KA7
192 MB pc100 RAM
6X DVD (24X CD-ROM) Using the digital audio cable

Encoders
Included Rio Audio Manager software

Skip To Page 1 Introduction 2 Rio 600 Overview 3 Rio 600 Overview - Continued 4 Rio Audio Manager 5 Audio Compression Explained 6 Audio Compression Explained - Continued • 7 WMA Vs. MP3 8 WMA Vs. MP3 - 2 9 WMA Vs. MP3 -3 10 Conclusion

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