Many users still remember those times whenthe main program for viewing video on the computer was the standard "Universal Player". Functional he did not shine, and friendliness in relation to inexperienced users did not differ. Only in 2000, Microsoft Corporation submitted to the public the application of Windows Media Player 7.

It differed from its predecessor not onlyconvenience, but also by the fact that the WMA format created by the company itself appeared in it. What is it and where can it be used? As we already said, it was developed in the "dungeons" of Microsoft, where by that time it was finally understood that they can not fight with the victorious march of MP3.

In addition, their standard players at the timesupported him not too adequately, and therefore rapidly lost popularity. As a "popular" alternative, the WMA format was created, which since then has been started to "push" into the Windows family with all the truth and untruth. Success of this practice had little, and not the least role in this played the very policy of the management of the Redmond company.

To begin with, they made the WMA formatcompletely proprietary - closed for distribution, modification and use in third-party products. And if for their "Office" this practice had a positive effect (after all, nobody canceled the monopoly), then it was frankly silly to enter the market of multimedia formats, already crowded with players.

However, the characteristics of the WMA itself (Windows MediaAudio) is not so bad at all. So, the manufacturer claims that the compressed music file with a bitrate of 160 kbit / s is in no way inferior to the MP3 file with the same indicator of 256 kbit / s. The statement is controversial, and its first versions did not support a higher bitrate, which made the WMA format not very popular among music lovers. In addition, with a sound frequency above 15 kHz, all the "extra" was cut off mercilessly, so that there could be no question of any "quality of the CD".

We must pay tribute to Microsoft: using their virtually unlimited resources, they have achieved the introduction of support for their brainchild almost in all "iron" and software players, so to date, the desire to change the format of WMA to MP3 to play it in your player has lost its relevance. Moreover, from the distant 1995, when its first version appeared, the codec was "doross" to its ninth reincarnation, in which many errors of past issues were corrected.

In particular, the sound quality has greatly increased,there was a possibility of two-pass VBR-coding, which automatically transferred the "eternally forgotten" WMA to the category of quite strong players in the digital audio market. In addition, a very famous and popular Winamp player can "rob" it with music CDs, which requires only the out_wma.dll plug-in.

Thus, it makes little sense tothere is no way to convert WMA to MP3 format, because thanks to Microsoft's perseverance this codec is on par with competing formats supported by all devices and programs for digital music playback. In addition, as a result of this conversion, sound quality can deteriorate significantly, which is unlikely to please you.