Quote: Original post by tiles
"Licensed by Microsoft; fees are for use of tools to create content or for the provision of decoders to endusers, not per use or per unit distributed."

If you wouldn't mind, could you post a link to where you got that information for future reference?

Also if you wouldn't mind, could you post some samples of the sound you're having issues with in MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and Wave? I'd just like to hear what the problem is in question.

Quote: Original post by tiles
My musician , who writes the music , has Wavelab . And was able to test all three encoding types with one software. He´s the one with the best ears . And he shares my opinion , too .

A musician praising WMA!! Wow!

Ah, sorry , the link for further reference . You are right, it should be here :)

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000067.shtml

Take a look under Sustainability factors / licensing and patent claims


Heh, seems that i have started something like a flamewar because of WMA :D

That was not my goal . And i don´t want to follow that line . My primary goal was to find informations if WMA has the same per unit Licensing than MP3 , and if i can use it in my game . Which is solved for now.

The question which codec to use is another story . And everybody has to decided it by itself .

So forgive me , but i will not upload an example. I would have to keep it at my page then for further reference . Which would mean to block around 50 MB of my webspace. 50 MB too much ;)

The test can be done by everbody at its own by using a song, encoding it to the formats ,and listening then. Maybe a good idea to use different styles. From Jazz, Classic , Pop, Rock ... .

The pros and cons of the codecs is anyway a thing of another thread i think ...

For me this visible volume changing in OGG was just one point. Another point is that i don´t use a language but an Authoring Tool to create my game. It has a Direct Show Extension. But no extra OGG Extension . So i would have to provide the OGG Codec separately . And the User would have to install it . Which isn´t the case with WMA . Most Windows PC´s has this codec installed . One point less to worry . Because Users , well, i receive even mails about problems how to unzip my Zipfiles . And now tell such an user how to install a codec ... ;)

I'm sure you'll do fine with WMA, but your experiences with OGG don't represent how it can (and should) work.

If you're using the encoder correctly, there will be no changes in volume. A good, free program to use on Windows is CDex (get it for free on sourceforge; comes with the codecs you need, as well as LAME MP3 encoding if you want to compare).

Also, if you use OGG, your end user does NOT need to install any codecs if the audio is programmed well. You can include what's necessary with the program without the user needing to install anything at all. You mentioned that your game is freeware; if it's also open source, try using SDL's sound library, and the mixer extension, which have great, very easy, out of the box use of OGG.