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AAC: improved compression of audio files

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AAC Format

The Advanced Audio Coding audio format, or AAC for short, offers very good sound quality even at low bit rates. While you need a bit rate of at least 192 kbit / s for CD quality with MP3, you can achieve the same quality with AAC from a bit rate of at least 128 kbit / s. As a result, AAC files are much smaller than MP3 files and are often used, for example, when streaming music or Internet radio.

AAC AUDIO FORMAT

AAC became known especially through iTunes. The music player developed by Apple preferably uses this format. One reason for this is that copy protection can be built into AAC, preventing uncontrolled transfer of music files.

Better than MP3

As with MP3, the AAC format removes sounds that are not perceptible to humans and therefore unnecessary. This applies both to inaudible frequency ranges and to redundant tones that arise, for example, by overlapping. Therefore, a low data rate does not necessarily mean a deterioration of the sound. A decisive advantage over MP3: AAC files have the same quality and a significantly smaller file size than MP3 files.

AAC has other advantages as well. AAC supports up to 48 channels, while MP3 only supports six. Also, the scanning range is significantly wider with AAC. It ranges from 8 to 96 kHz. AAC achieves good sound quality starting at 94 kbit / s. Bit rates of 192 kbit / s or 224 kbit / s correspond to almost lossless CD quality. By the way, AAC files mainly use the .mp4 file extension and are used by Apple iTunes, Quicktime, mobile phones, car radios, Nintendo and Playstation, among others. AAC is also used for Internet radio.

Compress AAC

If you want to compress a file according to AAC, you can use various software programs, so-called encoders, for this. Both free and paid software are available on the market, and there are few programs that work really well. Some examples are Nero or Liquifier.

Where does the AAC come from?

AAC was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute, with other companies such as Sony and Nokia also involved. The goal was to develop a standardized audio format that offered very good sound quality in the smallest possible size. AAC is a further development of the MPEG-2 standard. Later more AAC profiles were developed under MPEG4. If you want to use AAC commercially, you have to pay for a license, which is why most encoders are paid.

AAC comes with different profiles

AAC has different profiles that can be selected for compression. Typically the LC profile is used, which is suitable for medium to high data rates. Other profiles are the HE profile, the SSR profile and the LD profile. Due to the different profiles, in some players it may happen that data such as the artist or the title is not displayed correctly because the existing profile is not supported correctly.

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Do you know what is the best audio format? (for musicians and listeners)

Maybe you are a musician who has had the hard work of learning sound theory, writing and arranging your music, practicing, recording, and now you want to show your work to the world. What is the best audio format to distribute your recording? Or maybe you are a music lover looking for the best way to organize your collection. It may be that your collection comes from CDs or vinyl or even digitally downloaded. What is the best audio format to store your collection?

Choosing the right file format is important. On the one hand, the selected format affects the fidelity of the sound. However, the selected format also limits which devices can play your files. In this guide, we explain the different audio formats available, what they offer and how they are used in the best possible way. First, let’s understand what digital audio files are.

In short, what is the best audio format for you?
To choose the best audio file format you need, think about the purpose of each file. Here are some common uses with suggestions for the best audio formats for each:

If you are an artist …

Do you record a CD with your work? WAV! Conventional CDs use WAV, so export your music from DAW to Wav (or other lossless and then convert properly) and use these files to burn to CD. If you compress CDs from a factory, export in wav but in the original sampling rate and bit depth settings. Leave these settings to them.
Do you share your music with the public? Lossy! You want a smaller file size and maximum compatibility with them from your listeners. Any device plays an MP3 file and is easy to share online.
Should you distribute your music with Magroove or another aggregator for streaming services and online music stores? Streaming services have their own conversion systems, and each one works in a different format (the vast majority, lossy), so you probably won’t get a lossless song. Get a good mp3 that survives encoding (and is easier to load) and save Lossless versions somewhere, whether burning to CD or distributing to acts overseas!
If you are a listener or a collector …
Are you archiving your music? FLAC with maximum compression! A lossless compressed format such as FLAC or ALAC lets you store your files efficiently without losing sound quality. Records in the original multimedia format settings. CD, for example, 16-bit, 44.1 kHz.
Do you digitize music from a vinyl? Record at least in a lossless format. Read about the recording / conversion settings, especially sample rate and bit depth, and understand what lossless quality you need.

Digital audio format guide.

Since digital music has become popular, its fans have gradually developed the desire to hear it in the best possible quality.
For a time, the technical limits and the costs prevented us from achieving this goal, which is no longer an illusion.

The music streaming services market has never been so successful and we talk a lot about it in this article, but there are so many digital music formats … we’ve made this guide for clarity.

The teacher recorded in the studio is recorded at the resolution that defines the artist, but then the album we hear can be converted into a large number of more or less compressed formats, which, as shown in this infographic, into two large families are divided. . ::

Lossy audio formats: If the quality and the data contained are inferior to the original file, which leads to loss of detail, but to the benefit of the lightness of the file. These formats are widely used by streaming services like Spotify and take up less space.

Lossless: If the quality of the generated file matches that of the original master, without loss of quality, however, they require storage systems such as NAS and are not ideal for streaming via a mobile device connection.

Let’s start with the first Lossy family (AAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and WMA)

AAC

Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-4) is the standard standard used by Apple for iTunes. Nostalgic people who had an iPod will remember that when CDs were imported into their MAC, the files were converted to this format. At the same bit rate, it takes up the same space as an MP3, but the conversion can be of higher quality.

MP3

An acronym for Moving Picture Expert Group-1/2 Audio Layer 3 is the world’s most widely used compressed audio format and was first introduced in 1998. The compression algorithm removes some details from the audio track that you can hardly hear The human ear By compressing a WAV file, you get an MP3 file that is up to 90 times lighter than the original. This depends on the bit rates or the amount of digital information (bits) that are transmitted or recorded in a unit of time. They can vary between 32 (poor quality) and 320 KB (excellent quality) per second.

OGG Vorbis

It’s an open source format with a quality comparable to MP3 that was unknown until recently, but is now used by services like Spotify. OGG is the file extension, while Vorbis is the compression algorithm.

WMA

Windows Media Player is the format invented by Microsoft in response to the MP3 standard. The quality is the same, but has the disadvantage that it is only compatible with devices of this brand.

Now let’s discover the features of the lossless family (FLAC, ALAC, AIFF, WAV and DSD).

FLAC

Free lossless audio codec. It is the most widely used open source format for downloading music without loss of quality compared to the original source. A fairly attentive ear can easily tell the difference from a smaller format, lower quality file.
iTunes does not support playback of this format because it uses its (ALAC).

A THE C.

The Apple Lossless Audio Codec or FLAC for the Apple world is only ideal if you use Apple branded devices, even if it does not correspond to the FLAC in terms of weight.

AIFF

This audio swap file format is also owned by Apple, which was developed based on the Electronic Arts swap file format and is particularly suitable for audiophiles and music producers. It has essentially the same properties as the WAV format, but without compression, and is used by artists because it can also be used to embed metadata such as text, notes or other information in the file.

WAV

The WAVE audio file format, introduced by Microsoft and IBM in 1991, continues to be used and represents what you get when you import a music CD to your Microsoft computer. When playing back a file of this format that can also be read by a MAC, a special function is used in the Intel CPU. These are very heavy files that reach a maximum of 2 GB and reproduce the sounds in a very faithful manner.

DSD

Direct Stream Digital is a registered trademark of Philips and Sony, developed for the Super Audio CD. An encoding method is used that uses a single bit instead of predicting a higher bit depth, but at a much higher sampling rate to record, store, and reproduce extremely high sound quality. The original sampling rate was 2,822 MHz and its format is known as DSD64

THE BEST AUDIO FORMAT

Sound as well as the image is a fundamental piece in an audiovisual production.

If you had to choose between these two extreme situations with which one you would stay.

A good image resolution, but with a sound of poor quality.
Poor image quality, but with a clear and defined sound.
The ideal is to have a good balance of quality between image and sound.

An audio format is a multimedia container that saves data an audio file.

Each of these has its own characteristics and capabilities to be able to be reproduced in one or another system.

They have a series of properties that greatly influence the quality of the file, including the speed or frequency of sampling and the bit depth of information.

AUDIO FORMATS ACCORDING TO ITS QUALITY

The best way to classify the large number of audio formats that exist, is depending on whether they have quality loss or not when compared to the original source of Sound.

Depending on this, we have:

Audio files without loss of compressed and uncompressed.
Files with loss of quality.

UNCOMPRESSED AUDIO FORMATS

These files contain the audio in the highest original recording quality even when it is processed and stored on a computer.

The main drawback is that they are relatively large, which means storing less audio files on a hard drive.

Two examples of uncompressed formats are WAV and AIFF.

The .WAV (Waveform Audio File Format) property of IBM and Microsoft is relatively similar to the AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) co-developed by Apple Inc.

Both formats can be used in both operating systems.

They are very similar, the difference is that AIFF files allow metadata to be stored inside, that is, additional information such as:

Artist name.
Cover of the disk.
Copyright.
Different notes.
Not being compressed, they take up too much space, but without a doubt to edit the sound is the most successful option.

AUDIO FORMATS COMPRESSED WITHOUT LOSS

These types of formats achieve thanks to a series of algorithms smaller files without losing quality.

HOW CAN THEY COMPRESS WITHOUT LOSING QUALITY?

Uncompressed formats encode both the sound of a recording and the silences, a few seconds of sound from an audio file will weigh the same as the same seconds of silence.

These types of formats compress the file making the silence occupy almost no size.

Among these formats we have the FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) which is the most popular, created by Windows, the ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) that was created by Apple Inc. and the APE format of Monkey’s Audio.

The three formats are very similar, the fundamental difference will be in its compatibility with the different players.

The FLAC file is the most popular because it is compatible with Windows and macOS, the ALAC created by Apple Inc is very exclusive and practically only works if we play it on iTunes.

Finally, the APE, a format only available in Windows that manages to compress more than the FLAC and the ALAC, but has the disadvantage that it is only compatible with a small number of players.

AUDIO FORMATS COMPRESSED WITH LOSS

Finally, we have compressed formats with loss of quality where you get a file that occupies less space by discarding some frequencies in the sound, usually parts of the audio that are inaudible to the human ear.

Among these formats we have the popular MP3, AAC, OGG and MP2 among others.

The MP3 file (MPEG Audio Layer III) is the standard format for sharing music on the network and the most popular of all since it is compatible with virtually all music players, making this the first option to choose between sounds at a loss.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is similar to MP3, although a little more efficient, which means that files take up less space and have the same sound quality as MP3. It is a format widely used in iTunes and YouTube.

OGG (Vorbis) is a very popular open source compressed format in the spotify music application.

The MP2 is still used especially in radio and television transmissions, but it can be said that in other areas it has already been completely replaced by the MP3 that achieves greater compression with the same quality.