AU vs WMA
Een uitgebreide vergelijking van Sun AU Audio en Windows Media Audio — bestandsgrootte, kwaliteit, compatibiliteit en welk formaat het beste past bij jouw workflow.
Sun AU Audio
Audio FilesAU is a simple audio format from Sun Microsystems, commonly used on Unix systems.
Over AU-bestandenWindows Media Audio
Audio FilesWMA is a proprietary Microsoft audio format from the Windows Media framework. Once common in the Windows ecosystem, it has been largely replaced by AAC and MP3 for general use.
Over WMA-bestandenVergelijking van sterke punten
AU Sterke punten
- Trivially simple format — 24-byte header, then samples.
- µ-law 8-bit variant fits hours of speech in kilobytes.
- Stable since 1988; every major audio library reads it.
- Streaming-friendly: size field is optional.
WMA Sterke punten
- Good quality at low bitrates (32-64 kbps) — outperformed MP3 in that range.
- Native playback on every Windows version 2000 through 10.
- Lossless variant available (WMA Lossless) for archiving.
- Supports multichannel 5.1 surround audio.
Beperkingen
AU Beperkingen
- Aging — obsolete outside legacy and compatibility scenarios.
- No metadata beyond a single annotation string.
- No native multi-channel surround support.
- Limited to 8 codecs, none modern.
WMA Beperkingen
- Proprietary — poor support outside Windows and Windows Media Player.
- DRM variants made files brittle — many purchased tracks became unplayable when stores shut down.
- Ecosystem abandoned — no modern editors, hardware decoders, or streaming services use WMA.
- Windows 11 deprecated Windows Media Player entirely.
Technische specificaties
| Specificatie | AU | WMA |
|---|---|---|
| MIME types | audio/basic, audio/au, audio/x-au | — |
| Extensions | .au, .snd | — |
| Header | 24 bytes (magic, offset, size, encoding, rate, channels, info) | — |
| Codecs | PCM 8/16/24/32-bit, µ-law, A-law, IEEE float | — |
| Byte order | Big-endian | — |
| MIME type | — | audio/x-ms-wma |
| Extension | — | .wma |
| Container | — | ASF (Advanced Systems Format) |
| Variants | — | WMA Standard, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, WMA Voice |
| Max bitrate | — | 768 kbps (WMA Pro) |
Typische bestandsgroottes
AU
- 10-second clip (8-bit µ-law, 8 kHz) 80 KB
- 10-second clip (16-bit PCM, 44.1 kHz stereo) ~1.7 MB
WMA
- 3-min song (128 kbps) 3 MB
- 3-min song (Lossless) 25-35 MB
- 1-hour talk (64 kbps) 28 MB
Klaar om te converteren?
Converteer online tussen AU en WMA, gratis en zonder iets te installeren. Versleutelde upload, automatische verwijdering na 60 minuten.
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Veelgestelde vragen
Upload je AU-bestand naar KaijuConverter om het direct in je browser om te zetten naar PDF, JPG, PNG of een ander standaardformaat.
Upload je WMA-bestand naar KaijuConverter om het direct in je browser om te zetten naar PDF, JPG, PNG of een ander standaardformaat.
Ja, gratis tot 25 MB (tot 1 GB met 24-uurspas of Pro) en alle bestanden worden na 60 minuten automatisch verwijderd.
Ja, gratis tot 25 MB (tot 1 GB met 24-uurspas of Pro) en alle bestanden worden na 60 minuten automatisch verwijderd.