Windows Media Audio (WMA) is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft. It encompasses a family of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats. WMA was designed as a competitor to the popular MP3 format. It offers various versions, including WMA Standard, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, and WMA Voice, each tailored for different audio quality and compression needs. WMA Standard is a lossy codec intended for general-purpose audio encoding, while WMA Pro offers higher quality audio at lower bitrates, supporting multi-channel audio and higher sampling rates. WMA Lossless provides bit-for-bit identical audio reproduction, sacrificing compression efficiency for perfect audio fidelity. WMA Voice is optimized for speech encoding, making it suitable for voice recordings and dictation. WMA files are typically stored with the .wma extension and can be played back on a wide range of devices and software, especially those running Windows operating systems. However, cross-platform support has improved over time, with many media players on other operating systems also supporting WMA playback.