Although many dematerialized music rhymes with MP3, it is recommended to take a tour of the owner in existing dematerialized formats to choose the audio format well when digitizing their CD / Vinyl.
What is an audio format?
An audio format is to simplify a kind of container where dematerialized music is stored: it is important to choose it carefully when ripping a CD, because its properties will directly affect the quality of the file created.
Therefore, selecting audio format is a crucial step and it is advisable to guarantee three things with priority: the quality, functionality, and the fact that they are standard and legible on a maximum of devices, whether on a PC or MAC computer, but also on your smartphone / car radio …
It is also important to understand that in general, and although there are exceptions, the choice of audio format consists of placing the cursor in the middle between the quality on the one hand and the space occupied by the media on the other. storage.
Choose audio format: which challengers?
select aac-ogg-wma mp3 audio format
The 4 semi-amazing audio formats with destructive compression.
MP3:
Give glory where honor is due. MP3 is just as popular as it is underrated: it will have done a lot for dematerialized music by itself and has enabled millions of people around the world to discover a new way to listen to their music.
MP3 is a format of strong and destructive compression, in other words, a large part of the musical signal will be suppressed (priority, frequencies inaudible to the human ear … but not only!), And therefore offers a quality that only becomes good for from 256/320 kbps.
Is this a good opportunity today? Not being the best from a quality standpoint, choosing mp3 audio format today allows you to be sure that you can listen to it on all devices released for 10 years. MP3 is dematerialized music, what jeans should wear: versatility and the highest “acceptance rate” in the world.
Note that it is also advisable to choose mp3 audio format if you have limited storage space on a smartphone, for example because it is (in the company of AAC / WMA / OGG) the type of format that requires least space.
AAC:
This format is similar to “Apple MP3”. It has the same qualities and shortcomings as the previous one with some details: slightly better at the same speed, on the other hand it is far less standard: except for the fact that manufacturers have made explicit agreements (and pay because they require a license) , we find in Practice much fewer AAC compliant devices.
So it should be avoided unless you only have Apple products around you (even the car radio? I doubt it) and even in this case they are all perfectly mp3 compatible.
WMA
If AAC is Apple’s MP3, WMA Microsoft is MP3. Even less widespread because it doesn’t benefit from iTunes / Music Store / iPOD steamroller (who still remembers Zune’s iPod killer? Miscrosoft)
Again, forget the same qualities and shortcomings as MP3, but even less standard, therefore urgent. I even advise you to convert your existing WMA files to MP3 at a similar or slightly higher bit rate to ensure durability. Therefore, choosing WMA audio format today is not a good idea.
OGG:
We also find it under the name “vorbis”, we also have an mp3 clone here, except it is compatible with the free world (understand free) a bit in the same format as Linux.
Ogg is a completely free format unlike the previous ones, but despite this it is very confidential and is generally used only by those who take a pro-free dogmatic stance. While this position is quite respectable, selecting OGG audio format in 2014/2015 does not seem like a good idea because it is not widely distributed and above all it is like MP3, a destructive format.
WAV:
WAV is the first format on the list that does not deteriorate the quality extracted from the CD, and therefore offers an identical bit rate of 1411 kbps and therefore provides optimal quality.
However, the format shows its age and is limited in several ways: no space optimization (one second of silence = one second of noise) and no metadata or album cover management.
Therefore, choosing Wav audio format is similar to generating very heavy files and simply impossible to organize properly in a music database.
