WMA encoding problem...

I heve an mp3 player that allows me to play WMAs mp3s and I would of course rather use WMAs because they have the same quality at a much smaller size.

I have been having this problem for quite a while and have talked to the tech support people from the company and they havn't been able to tell me anything useful, so I figured you people were probably smarter anyway.

When I encode a WMA I get this really wierd background noise. It sounds almost like metalic clanking or something. I have tried many different encoders and have the same problem. I recently formated put Win98 on and installed CD-DA encoder and tried only to get the background noise. It doesn't matter if I listen to it on my pc or on my mp3/wma player I can still hear it. It has happened on several differnt computers and I can't figure out what it is. I tried reinstalling the codec for WMA 8 and that didn't help. If you want to download a song with background noise to figure out what it is you can do so at http://www.zesna.com/messed-up.wma

If anyone could help me I would really REALLY appreciate it. Thanks so much!

I'd say your problem is the encoding rate. It looks like you're encoding at 64K and "CD quality" is 128 (mp3 or wma). I encode all of my mp3s at 256. The lower the bitrate, the lower the quality the music will be (the more lossy it is). If you go below 128-160 you'll notice a large hit in quality (it sounds more like a tin can recording). Up your encoding to 128 or 160 and give that a try. Downside is all your songs will now be double the size on your drive (but you'll have much better quality).

yeah, WMA and MP3s have about the same rate of bytes/second except my burner won't burn an audio CD with WMAs...

I don't think that's the problem. I used to be able to encode at that bitrate and not have any problem with it but all of the sudden it won't work right. Plus I'm pritty sure for WMAs that 64 bits is near cd quality but not so for mp3s. WMAs can have lower bitrate and a higher quality.

128 is CD quality for both (you might be able to get away with 96). Without getting too much into it, it does depend on the music type that you're encoding as well (if you want to know more read up on how the compression actually works).
The lower the bitrate you use, the more of the music gets taken out (theoretically stuff most people won't notice). Typical encoding rate is 128. Most people I know will use at least 160. I used to encode with wma but moved back to mp3s to get the higher bitrate. I can tell right now you're not an audiophile (or you'd use the highest bitrate you could).

- I looked and indeed MediaPlayer says 64K is 'CD Quality' but it's not I assure you. And you'll notice on the other side it says best quality (which means you're using worst quality even if it doesn't have it labeled that way).

- Your problem: encoding rate.
- Your solution: up the encoding rate.

Do a few tests. Encode the same song at all of the bitrates available and listen to which one sounds good enough for you. I bet you'll settle on 128.

When I got the mp3/wma player it had wmas encoded at 64 bits on it that sounded great. Plus if you listen to the song http://www.zesna.com/messed-up.wma it isn't a tinny sound. I know what you people mean and that's not it.

I tried encodeing at 128kbps in WMA and MP3, I got the wird noise in each format at each bitrate.