About the Wma file format
- Name
- Windows Media Audio File
- Extension
- .wma
- Format
- Binary
- Category
- Audio
- Developer
- Microsoft
- Description
- A WMA file is an audio file saved in the Advanced Systems Format (ASF) proprietary format developed by Microsoft. It contains Windows Media Audio and metadata objects such as the title, artist, album, and genre of the track. WMA files are similar to .MP3 files and primarily used for streaming music from the web.
- MIME Type
- audio/x-ms-wma
- Sample
- sample.wma
- Wikipedia
- .wma on Wikipedia
Windows media audio file (WMA) is a sequence of audio codecs brought together with their coding formats that were developed by Microsoft. It is made up of four types of codecs and designed to compete with MP3 and RealAudio codecs. Mainly, it intended to solve the deficiencies believed to be preexisting as a result of the use of the MP3.
The container format is mostly in its digital form, found in the Advanced Systems Format (ASF). The container has metadata used in the encoding of the file, which is similar to the tags used in the MP3 file. Unlike other related formats, WMA can use up to 5 or 6 blocks in coding and encoding the files.
The file uses the .wma file extension. WMA can encode samples of up to 48 kHz. It also has a low latency for encoding and decoding and supports low- delay audio. It is a lossy format that has some sub formats which can compress audio data without losing any bit of it using lossless codecs.
Thanks to its lossless compression, the WMA format can retain high quality while still taking up little space. Windows media player is mostly used in opening the WMA files. VLC, M player and MPC-HC are among the software’s that are capable of playing WMA files.
