Why does XACT only support WAV files?  WAV files take up too much precious space, with about 10 mb/minute.  MP3 files or WMA files would be much more space efficient, at about 1 mb/minute.  This would save a LOT of space and keep the quality of the audio.  So my question is, why only WAVs?

You can compress the audio in XACT: http://blogs.msdn.com/mitchw/archive/2007/04/27/audio-compression-using-xact.aspx.

Wow, thanks!  That cut the size of my game from 90mb to 19mb!

I have just read something about xna 3.0 and media class on abi.exdream.com. Benjamin mentioned some .mp3 codecs in new xna CTP.
 
I thought those are licensed, rather hoped to see flac and ogg codecs. But It still makes me happy to see this.

I don't know if this will be zune only or something.

There are no MP3 codecs in GS3.

The Song/SoundEffect classes transcode the songs into .wma files at compile time for use on any of the platforms. I would assume it uses the MP3 decoder built into windows with media player to do this.

I've not compared the file sizes for WMA but they should be comparable to MP3 and dont need the runtime license on 360 and zune.

In theory I guess this means you could make a content processor which will do FLAC and OGG in the same way.

The ZMan:

In theory I guess this means you could make a content processor which will do FLAC and OGG in the same way.

Like QuickXAP does, sort of.

Exactly... hopefully Matthew will add options to convert to SOng/SoundEffect for 3.0 so that it doesn't only generate XAP files.

I am positive that Matthew will put The ZMan requests into the high priority queue.

If you supply a man with an illegal zune you own him for life ;-)

That's like not only selling your Soul to the Borg but also to The ZMan... Luckily I turned down the offer to become an end point of such an activity :]

The ZMan:

Exactly... hopefully Matthew will add options to convert to SOng/SoundEffect for 3.0 so that it doesn't only generate XAP files.

I haven't had the time to site down and get some"quality" time in with the new 3.0 Song/SoundEffect features so I am not sure what I can do in this regard but I will certainly have a look into it. In fact will give me something to do when the wife and I are in BC next week and she is flittering around with her family.

Eitherway look for an updated 'public' release here soon. I think I may have the compile time issue solved but only coding and testing will tell :)

Zman, boki, like I even remember who my soul belongs to after near 20 years of marriage and other sorted misfortunes.. =)

Also, MP3 encoding is a copyrighted system and you need to pay for a license to use it for redistribution. The nature of XNA would make that impossible.

DelvarWOrld:

Also, MP3 encoding is a copyrighted system and you need to pay for a license to use it for redistribution. The nature of XNA would make that impossible.

How so? You could license MP3 technology and use those MP3s inside of XNA provided you got a compatible codec. There's nothing stopping you from doing this if you wanted.