In what format is it better to listen to music?
Understanding digital audio formats is not easy. It is even more difficult to come to an unequivocal conclusion in which format it is better to listen to music.
If you look at the audio format comparison table on Wikipedia, your eyes will start to flutter with columns of silent numbers. Let’s try to find out what’s behind this.
In what format is it better to listen to music? Three lost whales
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Let’s make a reservation right away that the article talks ONLY about general characteristics and will not include some details. Moving forward, Lifehacker will conduct its own unbiased investigation. And today we will try to generalize the already known experience in one way or another.
There is an analog and a figure.
The analog is good, but short-lived and inconvenient. Therefore, analog media, despite high vinyl sales, will not be making a comeback.
Digital audio can be of three main types:
in a format that does not use compression;
in a format that uses lossless compression;
in a format that uses lossy compression.
At first glance, lossless formats are more promising. This is not always the case, as we will discuss in more detail in one of the following materials. Uncompressed formats make no sense other than storing the master recordings needed to create audio content. They are easier to restore. Storing and listening to home recordings is superfluous.
Of the many parameters of digital audio, the user must first be concerned with sample rate (the accuracy of digitizing an analog signal in time), bit depth (the accuracy of digitizing in amplitude – volume) , the bit rate (the amount of information contained in the file in terms of one second).
Today we will talk about lossy.
For compressed sound, the concept of the psychoacoustic model is very important – the ideas of scientists and engineers about how a person perceives sound. The ear perceives the entire spectrum of acoustic waves entering it. However, the brain processes the signals.
