What is the difference between WMA and WAV?

WMA is actually the short form of Windows Media Audio; wav is just a shortened form for Wave. WMA happens to be a file format that was recently created by Microsoft to be their media applications' default player. Wav is known to make use of the PCM encoding method, which is also used in audio CDs. WMA functions such that compressed audio are stored in them so as reduce the size of the file and still maintain the sound quality.

You can also use wav to store compressed audio, but they are not often used for that function. Most times, you find uncompressed audio in wav files in such a way that there is a lot of space for sound time. Another difference between these two file formats is the devices on which they can work on. WAV has been in existence before WMA. Thus its encoded file can work on almost all devices, whereas the WMA only works on more recent devices.

WMA and WAV are two different formats for storing audio information in a digital format. The most noticeable distinction among the two is how each encodes data. WAV encodes information faithfully, while WMA does not encode a faithful copy of the original audio. WMA also compresses the final file.WAV; on the other hand, it does not compress the file. The techniques utilized by WMA allow it to create files that are about ten percent of the data produced by WAV.

This data generates two performance effects on the playing devices. WMA is a smaller device that allows access to the storage media a lot less often. However, it does need additional processing power to decompress and decode the information. WAV has large files, which is not preferable since storage space is limited. WMA is far superior for storing music files.