How do WAV and WMAcompare? Here's everything you need to know to choose the right format — and how to convert between them.
Waveform Audio File Format
WAV is an uncompressed audio format that stores raw audio data at full quality. It's the standard format for professional audio editing, music production, and any application where quality is paramount.
Windows Media Audio
WMA is Microsoft's proprietary audio format. While it offered competitive quality in the early 2000s, it has largely been superseded by AAC and other formats. It's still encountered in legacy Windows media libraries.
| Specification | WAV | WMA |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Waveform Audio File Format | Windows Media Audio |
| Extension | .wav | .wma |
| MIME type | audio/wav | audio/x-ms-wma |
| Category | Audio | Audio |
| Developer | Microsoft / IBM | Microsoft |
| Year introduced | 1991 | 1999 |
| Compression | Lossless | Lossy |
WAV preserves full audio quality with no compression artifacts. WMA offers much smaller files at the cost of some quality. For casual listening, WMA is fine. For production or archival, use WAV.
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