Editing Windows Media Audio (section)

===Criticism of claimed quality===
Microsoft's claims of WMA sound quality have frequently drawn complaints. "Some audiophiles challenge Microsoft's claims regarding WMA's quality", according to a published article from EDN.<ref name="EDN Internet Radio"/> Another article from MP3 Developments wrote that Microsoft's claim about CD-quality audio at 64&nbsp;kbit/s with WMA was "very far from the truth".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mp3developments.com/article4.php |title=Lossy Audio Formats |publisher=MP3Developments |access-date=2007-08-16 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070815110114/http://www.mp3developments.com/article4.php |archive-date=2007-08-15 }}</ref> At the early stages of WMA's development, a representative from RealNetworks claimed that WMA was a "clear and futile effort by Microsoft to catch up with [[RealAudio]] 8".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=6637 |title=Codec Rivalry Spurs Development |publisher=streamingmedia.com Codec |access-date=2007-08-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071015090021/http://streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=6637 |archive-date=2007-10-15 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Microsoft has sometimes claimed that the sound quality of WMA at 64&nbsp;kbit/s equals or exceeds that of MP3 at 128&nbsp;kbit/s (both WMA and MP3 are considered near-[[Transparency (data compression)|transparent]] at 192&nbsp;kbit/s by most listeners). In a 1999 study funded by Microsoft, [[National Software Testing Laboratories]] (NSTL) found that listeners preferred WMA at 64&nbsp;kbit/s to MP3 at 128&nbsp;kbit/s (as encoded by [[MusicMatch Jukebox]]).<ref>[http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/compare/audiocompare.aspx Microsoft's summary of the study] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071024035924/http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/compare/audiocompare.aspx |date=2007-10-24 }}. [http://www.nstl.com/reports/Final%20MSAudio%20Report.pdf Full report from NSTL] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071128082513/http://www.nstl.com/reports/Final%20MSAudio%20Report.pdf |date=2007-11-28 }}.</ref> 

Both MP3 and WMA encoders have undergone active development and improvement for many years, so their relative quality may change over time.