WAV AND MP3 COMPARISON | FEATURES AND WHICH IS BEST Part 2
And now to the description of the formats. WAV music format The WAV music format was developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft engineers. The goal was to create a universal container format that would store uncompressed music and could be played on multiple devices.
In fact, they succeeded. WAV is loved by both users (thanks in large part to native support for the Windows operating system) and music studios (minimal loss, fast encoding and decoding). It is true that WAV has not lost the main drawback of uncompressed formats: the huge file size. But the sound quality is as high as possible. In fact, it is a quasi-analog format in which the audio stream is recorded in waves. MP3 music format The MP3 music format was developed by the German company Fraunhofen IIS and was originally created to transfer audio into video files. Even its name stands for Moving Picture Expert Group Layer 3, that is, “the third layer in moving pictures”. But it turned out that the format is perfect for recording any sound and can be easily played without being packaged in an MPEG container. Since the task of the developers was to reduce the bit rate (“size”) of the audio track, otherwise it will weigh like a video track, they boldly mocked the audio stream. And, in addition to frame-splitting and spike-pasting compression, they also eliminated inaudible frequencies. That is, when encoding, everything below 20 Hz and above 15 kHz is removed from the audio stream. In theory, a person does not hear this, so he should not suffer. In practice, it turns out that frequencies below 20 Hz make the bass deeper, and above 15 kHz the voice is more detailed. But it doesn’t matter if headphones or speakers can’t reproduce frequencies below 20 Hz and above 15 kHz. And inexpensive audio equipment just can’t do that. But MP3 files are “heavy” a bit and provide enough quality for independent listening. And in the age of digital distribution, these two virtues have made MP3 very popular. Difference Between MP3 and WAV Actually, the main difference between WAV and MP3 is that the former is uncompressed and incredibly detailed, while the latter is compressed and not very verbose. But for the sake of music in the first format, you will have to buy an external hard drive, and in the second, a flash drive will suffice. The WAV format in 2019 is commonly used in the field of “professional audio”. Record musicians in studios. It’s where the songs mix. Only notorious audiophiles with excellent quality audio equipment listen to music on it. The MP3 format is now ubiquitous. It is suitable for listening at home, on the road (from a smartphone or player), in a car through a radio. A CD can fit about 50 songs in high quality or about 200 in low quality. The quality, of course, is not very high, but sufficient. And the “size” decides. In terms of numbers, the WAV bit rate is 1140 kbps, the MP3 bit rate is a maximum of 320 kbps. Which format is better, WAV or MP3? There is no definitive answer to this question. These formats are designed for different purposes. Comparison table, below: TECHNIQUE ON WHICH THEY WILL LISTEN TO MUSIC. PREFERRED FORMAT WHY HIGH DETAIL WAV HIGH-END EQUIPMENT, WITHOUT ELIMINATION OF INAUDIBLE FREQUENCIES ECONOMIC MP3 EQUIPMENT STILL CAN’T WAIT TO GET THE BEST SOUND QUALITY, CAN SAVE SPACE ON YOUR COMPUTER OR CUP PHONE PLAYER, MP3 PLAYER OF SPACE
