What's the difference Mp3 vs. WMA vs. M4A?

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I am presented with a folder (one of a tree of dozens of similar folders) containing what appear to be copies of the same track – the file name differs by a hyphen or space, the file size differs by perhaps 1%.
I’d like to eliminate duplicates and plan to do so by choosing the “best” extent of those which appear, as distinct from something I know about such as date-last-modified.

Given that “best” might be a subjective measurement, is there any appreciable difference between the formats { MP3 | WMA | M4A } when it comes to playing them via a computer program such as WinAmp?
I have read this Amazon post and am not elucidated.

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Given that “best” might be a subjective measurement, is there any appreciable difference between the formats { MP3 | WMA | M4A } when it comes to playing them via a computer program such as WinAmp?

My guess is that the bit rate would be more relevant than the encoding. However, it is not as easily determined as the file extension… All else being equal, I would pick the format that works in the most players (my guess would be MP3).

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… (my guess would be MP3).

Thanks Jefferson. I can set up an extent list to give preference (i.e. refrain from deleting) MP3 extents in favor of all others.

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is there any appreciable difference between the formats { MP3 | WMA | M4A } when it comes to playing them…?

At higher bit rates, only to a very discriminating ear on very high quality monitors. Your average earbuds, and even my old ears with middle of the road Sennheisers, are not going to discern any difference. If you want to get “under the CODEC hood” you’ll have some exploring to do. These might be good starting points: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_codecs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 and http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/index1.html
There’s some comments in earlier threads about the psychoacoustics of compressions schemes which may interest you, and also this information on quality vs. sampling rate: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti…ecommended_LAME (scroll down to Remarks)

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… are not going to discern any difference.

Thanks, John. The application is for local-listening (home-based) rather than studio work, so I can think in terms of less-than average ear buds.

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