MP3/WMA CD players

MP3/WMA

— the two most popular modern audio file formats. They belong to standards that provide lossy compression: a relatively small file size is achieved by degrading the transmission quality (or even completely removing) some sound fragments that are poorly perceived by the human ear. The absence of these fragments can be noticeable when listening to high-end equipment, so some audiophiles treat MP3 and WMA with a certain disdain. At the same time, at a sufficiently high bitrate, the sound quality of such files can be so close to lossless formats that only a very sophisticated ear can notice the difference.

Note that in modern CD players support for MP3 without WMA (and vice versa) is practically never found — if these standards are supported, then both at once. At the same time, the specific media from which such audio is played can be different: optical discs (CDs or DVDs), USB devices (flash drives, hard drives, portable players, iPod / iPhone) and even devices on a local network (see "Multimedia — DLNA").