It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as WMA, was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs.[1][2] WMA Pro, a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high resolution audio.[3] A lossless codec, WMA Lossless, compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity (the regular WMA format is lossy).[3] WMA Voice, targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates.[3] Microsoft has also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store audio encoded by WMA.