wma vs. mp3 quality comparison

bluenitepk

Honorable
Apr 7, 2013
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I have an older recorder that records only to wma format. Unfortunately for wider use of the records have to be converted to mp3 so I could play everywhere.
The best wma bitrate with this recorder (OlympusDS-40) is 128kbit. After converting to mp3 same bitrate, the sound considerably worse. Will not improve much even with the big increase. What is equivalent to the quality/size when converting wma to mp3? There is somewhere a comparison of the two formats?
Thanks for response
Peter
 
Solution
You can open each file with Audacity and compare them visually. Try doing the conversion with a different app. Haven't used Audacity with wma files but it's free so try it to do the conversion.
When Windows introduced WMA format (like 20 years ago), it was widely rumored that it provides better quality at same baudrates. I did not ran any audio tests, but you can try converting your WMA first into WAV, check how it sounds, and convert it back into eg 192 or 256 MP3.