S3/Diamond Rio 600 Review

WMA			MP3
64 kbps			64 kbps
96kbps			96 kbps
128kbps			128kbps

WMA			MP3
64 kbps			64kbps
96 kbps			96kbps
128 kbps			128kbps

Strangely enough, in both types of music the results were the same. In both the WMA clearly won out at 64 kbps and 96 kbps. At this sampling rate the difference in audio quality was obvious, the MP3 recording sounded muddy and tinny the lower the sampling rate However, the WMA format sounded great even at these low data rates.

It comes as no great surprise that WMA beats MP3 in terms of audio quality, as it is a much newer standard. In fact, there are many emerging standards that provide lower data rates and higher quality audio, such as AAC, but MP3 has widespread acceptance and availably.

From these tests I would advice any user of the Rio 600 to encode with the WMA format, at 64 kbps the audio quality is impressive and certainly allows a lot more music storage space on the Rio's 32 MB of memory.

MP3 may have launched the Internet music revolution, but its time as the top dog is running out.

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

Tools:

Add hardwarecentral.com to your favorites Add hardwarecentral.com to your browser search box IE 7 | Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.x