The most used audio formats
As you can imagine, when we talk about digital formats in the field of sound, the range is wide. When choosing the one that best suits our needs, we need to think about several questions. To do this, the first thing to do is to know the most used audio formats.
We start by clarifying the concepts of bit depth and sample rate, which are essential for understanding how audio formats work. These are two measurements that indicate the quality of a digital audio file.
When we read the specifications for audio formats and find, for example, 32 bit / 192 kHz and 24 bit / 96 kHz, these figures refer to “bit depth” and “sampling frequency”, respectively. They tell us the amount of information transmitted by the different formats and the quality of the sound. The more times a device reads samples, the higher the quality.
Audio formats
-MP3: These files weigh very little for any device to read. The downside is that the quality of compression is sacrificed.
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-WAV (Waveform Audio File Format): These are higher resolution files than MP3, an audio track which is coded with what is called Pulse Code Modulation (PCM). Analog audio tracks are encoded and converted to digital so that they can have sample rates and bit depth.
-AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format): it is very similar to WAV and also uses PCM to encode analog audio tracks and present them in digital format. Indeed, AIFF and WAV files are more or less interchangeable.
In short, when we talk about a file in WAV or AIFF audio format, we are talking about a good quality piece of sound.
