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What music file format is recommended? Part 2

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What music file format is recommended? Part 2

AUDIO FORMATS

Opus is a new audio compression format developed by the IETF and standardized by RFC6716 in 2012. There is very little hardware and software supported, but at low bit rates of 128 kbps or less, it appears to be the strongest sound quality with compression with lost.

audio formats

Vorbis is a free audio file format developed by Xiph.org. It seems to be used on Youtube too. Since the standard bit rate is 112 kbps, the sound quality at a low bit rate appears to be good.

WMA is a standard Windows audio compression method developed by Microsoft. If the bit rate is 160 kbps or less, it exceeds the MP3 upper limit frequency. However, the size will be a little larger.

AAL (ATRAC Advanced Lossless) is a lossless compressed version of ATRAC mentioned above. According to Sony, it can be compressed to about half the size of the data without losing any music information on the CD, but it actually seems to vary considerably depending on the sound source.

As the name implies, Apple Lossless (ALAC) is Apple’s lossless compression audio codec. Used in iTunes, etc.

FLAC is an audio file format developed and distributed as free open source software. It seems to be the most popular in lossless compression.

Monkey’s Audio is an audio format that compresses PCM losslessly without degrading sound quality. It is so named because it is used in music playing software called Monkey’s Audio. The characteristic is that it does not fit the name and the compression rate is high.

TAK is a high-speed, high-compression, lossless compression audio encoder. It has the same level of compression as Monkey’s Audio, but it’s pretty crazy.

TTA is a free real-time lossless compression audio encoder / decoder. Like TAK, it’s too manic so I wouldn’t use it.

WMA Lossless is a lossless compressed version of WMA mentioned above.

Equalizer Image
AIFF is an uncompressed audio file format developed by Apple. It seems to be the Windows WAV. It seems to have been used on Macintosh (Mac) for a long time.

WAV (WAVE) is a format for describing audio data developed by Microsoft and IBM. This is what happens when you convert a CD (Linear PCM) into an uncompressed file in Windows.

Also, the sound quality of lossy compressed music file formats is almost the same at 192 kbps bit rates. If it is 160 kbps or less, I am wondering if other compression formats are slightly better than MP3. In this case, it is better to check the music player software. Sound quality is exactly the same for lossless and uncompressed music file formats. Lossless compression will have issues with compression ratio and playback load.

I want to read it together
What is free high-quality music player software for Windows?
After all, what music file format is recommended?
Image of listening to music with a portable music player
I’ve mentioned it so far, but I recommend MP3 or WAV (AIFF). The reason is as follows.

Due to the large capacity of hard drives and flash memory, lossy compressed music file formats do not need to have a bit rate lower than 192 kbps.
The compression ratio of the lossless music file format is currently 60 to 70% maximum, so taking into account the encoding time and effort and loading during playback, the file format of Uncompressed music is sufficient for lossless compression.
I don’t think I can distinguish between 192kbps MP3 and WAV, so I can’t help but worry about the compression format.
MP3 and WAV have many compatible hardware and software.

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What music file format is recommended?

audio format

There are many types of music file formats, so it is difficult to know which one is recommended.

AUDIO FORMAT

I have only used MP3 and WAV due to their confusion, so I don’t really know about the new music file formats that are increasing year after year. So, I took a quick look at the existing music file formats based on the information from the internet. Let’s make a list of types and extensions so that you can easily understand them later.

* The target is a music file format that can be converted from a CD (linear PCM).

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* The format can be replaced with the term codec and the extension can be replaced with the term file format. Simply put, a codec is a device or software that can encode (encode) and decode (decode) data in both directions using one encoding method. A file format is an information device like a computer. It is the storage format of the file used in.

* The bit rate for lossy compression is 192 kbps.

* The corresponding items indicate the amount of hardware and software that the music file format supports. ◎ Many, ○ Many, ▲ Normal, △ Less, × Very few.

Currently, lossless compression is emerging as a compression format in addition to lossy compression. Irreversible compression (lossy compression) is a data compression method in which the data before compression and the data after compression do not completely match, and reversible compression (lossless compression) is the data before and after compression. It is a data compression method that exactly matches the data.

In other words, lossy compression is a poor sound quality compression method because it adds a reduction in the amount of data, and lossless compression is a good sound quality compression method because it does not reduce the amount of data. . They are all the same in the sense that they aim for high sound quality with the smallest possible size.

Now, I’m sure there are music file formats that you already know, but let’s briefly explain each one.

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AAC is a music file format standardized in 1997 (approved in 1999). Standardized in order to obtain high sound quality and high compression that exceeds MP3. If the bit rate is 160 kbps or less, it exceeds the MP3 upper limit frequency.

ATRAC is a voice data compression technology developed by Sony since 1992. If the bit rate is less than 128 kbps, it is above the upper frequency limit of MP3.

HE-AAC is a music file format standardized in 2003. By incorporating SBR technology into the aforementioned AAC, the playback band has been expanded and the sound quality and compression efficiency at low bit rates (128 kbps or less) have been vastly improved.

* SBR (Spectral Band Replication) is a technology for audio compression and encoding, which aims to strengthen the conventional encoding method and increase the compression rate.

MP3 is the oldest music file format standardized in 1991 (approved in 1993). Since it is old, it has a high penetration rate and there is a large amount of supported hardware and software.

Audio formats.

Audio formats.

Audio Formats

There are many types of voice file formats, as well as image file formats.

Audio Files

Since the digital audio files are easy to copy, the illegal copy and distribution of music files has become a problem these days.

As explained in what analog data is, the mechanism of digital audio files is that analog signals become digital data and are saved.

Explaining in detail the conversion method, to convert an analogue to digital waveform, it is necessary to perform a job called “sampling” that measures (record) the sound waveform at regular intervals, and is the sampling cycle. The sampling frequency is called (sampling frequency).

The sampling frequency represents the number of samples per second and is in Hz. In other words, it is a unit that expresses how many times the sound is measured and recorded per second, and the greater the value, the more faithful the original and greater sound becomes the quality of the sound. However, the amount of data will increase proportionally.

The sampling frequency of a typical music CD is 44.1 k Hz. However, even if the sampling frequency is increased, there are sounds and frequency bands that can not really be recorded, so some classical music enthusiasts love expensive analogue equipment.

In addition, it is not only the sampling frequency, which affects the quality of the sound, but also the “sampling bit” that indicates the strength (volume) of the sound (16 bits are 65,535, 24 bits are 16,777,215). (Express) and “Number of channels” (number of sound lines recorded as stereo, monaural and 5.1 channels) also have an effect. The higher the value, the greater the sound quality.

Another factor that greatly affects sound quality is the bit rate. The bit rate represents the amount of data to be recorded per second and the unit is “BPS”.

In other words, the higher the bit rate, the more information can be stored, which results in a higher sound quality. As will be described in detail below, in the MP3 file format, 128 K BPS is the minimum bit rate that can be heard.

However, there is “constant bit rate” and “variable bit rate” in the bit rate. The constant bit rate is the same bit rate that is fixed from the beginning to the end of the voice, and the variable bit rate increases or decreases the bit rate according to the amount of voice information.

In other words, the bit rate is high for clauses with multiple voices and the bit rate is low for simple low voice clauses. You can reduce the total size of the file by choosing a variable bit rate.

This is the information contained in the digitized data of analog audio signals.

However, digitized data can not be used as. Just converting this data into an arbitrary file format and saving them, it will be possible to use them with multimedia devices and application software that admit that format.

The storage format of said data

file format

Is named. A file format is a file format with an extension.

Then, to save the data in a file format, it is necessary to transform (encode: encoding) the data according to that format. (For coding, see What is a character code?)

A dedicated program is used to codify the data, but said coding program is

Codec (codec)
Is named. In other words, the gross data obtained by converting analog signals into digital data are processed by a codec to market them as a file format.

Therefore, there are many types of codecs and coding methods for each type of codec.

Most current codecs are programs that compress and encode data when creating a file and decompress (decompress) data by playing a file. In general terms, codecs are used to compress and decompress data. It refers to a compression method program of this type.