In order to get your music with recordJet to all major stores, your audio files must meet some general requirements to be accepted by stores. Here we explain everything about MP3 and other file formats, as well as the requirements that stores have on audio files.
You have probably already noticed that you cannot load tracks as MP3 files into recordJet, but only in a certain WAV format. What seems annoying to some at first, however, has two important reasons: the sound quality and the avoidance of problems.
WAV is actually just a container format in which audio data can be stored. The most popular are uncompressed WAV (E) files, which contain so-called PCM raw data and were created with a 16-bit sample size and a 44.1 kHz sample rate. When talking about WAV files (as is also here in this article), we usually mean exactly this variant, the so-called CD quality.
Uncompressed music files have the advantage that all the information in digital files is still available. This means that the music will sound almost as good when played back as the original recording. But at least as good as on a CD.
With a codec like FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), audio files can be losslessly compressed and reduced to about half their original file size without loss of quality. This works in a similar way to packing files in zip format, only the process is specially designed for music.
MP3 (actually MPEG-1 Audio Layer III), on the other hand, is a method for lossy compression of music files. You don’t need to be a professional to hear the quality differences between WAV and highly compressed MP3 without problems. In the case of lossy compression, the file information that is as “insignificant” as possible is removed, so the file size is naturally reduced as well. For example, an audio file can be reduced from 35-60 MB to 3-8 MB by such compression.
Unfortunately, the more a sound file is compressed, the worse the sound quality, as more information is removed from the file. The amount of information from the original file that is still available can normally be read at the so-called bit rate: a song with 320 kbit / s (= kilobits per second) is less compressed and has better sound quality than a song with 192 kbit / s. With MP3 with 320 kbit / s bit rate, even a professional can hardly hear any difference in CD quality.
So why doesn’t recordJet accept MP3 files at high bit rate?
It’s simple: all stores want to receive music in a different file format. The most widespread are the WAV or FLAC formats. But MP3 at various levels of compression are also required. One of the reasons for our decision to trust WAV is that we always want to offer the highest quality possible. If we were to convert your MP3s again, more information from the file would be lost. Even if you hardly hear a difference in quality in the original MP3 compared to the uncompressed version, this may become audible after a new conversion. Also, there is not just one MP3 codec with one parameter. Different codecs produce different results. Therefore, the sound quality may vary despite the same bit rate.
And why then exactly PCM with a bit rate of 1411 kbit / s, a sample size of 16 bits and a sample rate of 44100 Hz?
As already mentioned, this specification is the standard for CD quality. No store has yet demanded higher quality levels, which are entirely possible. In addition, everyone who participates in music production knows this format. For these reasons, and to avoid misunderstandings and problems, we have defined this format as our standard. Also, due to good internet connections, files of this size are rarely a problem for uploading these days. This can certainly take a bit longer, but it should still be within an acceptable range.
Why is it not necessary, or worse yet, to add metadata or tags to the uploaded files?
Unfortunately, the metadata and tags are not 100% clearly defined in WAV files or are used differently by different audio programs. We always provide stores with high quality metadata and possibly tag the audio files, according to their standards.
