Windows Media Audio
Audio data compression technology / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as WMA, was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs.[2][3] WMA Pro, a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high-resolution audio.[4] A lossless codec, WMA Lossless, compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity (the regular WMA format is lossy).[4] WMA Voice, targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates.[4] Microsoft has also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store audio encoded by WMA.
Filename extension |
.wma |
---|---|
Internet media type | audio/x-ms-wma |
Developed by | Microsoft |
Initial release | August 17, 1999; 24 years ago (1999-08-17)[1] |
Type of format | Audio |
Open format? | No |
Free format? | No |