Choose the sound format well into 2020

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Although many dematerialized music rhymes with MP3, it is recommended to take a tour of the owner in existing dematerialized formats to choose the audio format well when digitizing their CD / Vinyl.

What is an audio format?

An audio format is to simplify a kind of container where dematerialized music is stored: it is important to choose it carefully when ripping a CD, because its properties will directly affect the quality of the file created.

Therefore, selecting audio format is a crucial step and it is advisable to guarantee three things with priority: the quality, functionality, and the fact that they are standard and legible on a maximum of devices, whether on a PC or MAC computer, but also on your smartphone / car radio …

It is also important to understand that in general, and although there are exceptions, the choice of audio format consists of placing the cursor in the middle between the quality on the one hand and the space occupied by the media on the other. storage.

Choose audio format: which challengers?

select aac-ogg-wma mp3 audio format
The 4 semi-amazing audio formats with destructive compression.

MP3:
Give glory where honor is due. MP3 is just as popular as it is underrated: it will have done a lot for dematerialized music by itself and has enabled millions of people around the world to discover a new way to listen to their music.

MP3 is a format of strong and destructive compression, in other words, a large part of the musical signal will be suppressed (priority, frequencies inaudible to the human ear … but not only!), And therefore offers a quality that only becomes good for from 256/320 kbps.

Is this a good opportunity today? Not being the best from a quality standpoint, choosing mp3 audio format today allows you to be sure that you can listen to it on all devices released for 10 years. MP3 is dematerialized music, what jeans should wear: versatility and the highest “acceptance rate” in the world.

Note that it is also advisable to choose mp3 audio format if you have limited storage space on a smartphone, for example because it is (in the company of AAC / WMA / OGG) the type of format that requires least space.

AAC:
This format is similar to “Apple MP3”. It has the same qualities and shortcomings as the previous one with some details: slightly better at the same speed, on the other hand it is far less standard: except for the fact that manufacturers have made explicit agreements (and pay because they require a license) , we find in Practice much fewer AAC compliant devices.

So it should be avoided unless you only have Apple products around you (even the car radio? I doubt it) and even in this case they are all perfectly mp3 compatible.

WMA
If AAC is Apple’s MP3, WMA Microsoft is MP3. Even less widespread because it doesn’t benefit from iTunes / Music Store / iPOD steamroller (who still remembers Zune’s iPod killer? Miscrosoft)

Again, forget the same qualities and shortcomings as MP3, but even less standard, therefore urgent. I even advise you to convert your existing WMA files to MP3 at a similar or slightly higher bit rate to ensure durability. Therefore, choosing WMA audio format today is not a good idea.

OGG:
We also find it under the name “vorbis”, we also have an mp3 clone here, except it is compatible with the free world (understand free) a bit in the same format as Linux.

Ogg is a completely free format unlike the previous ones, but despite this it is very confidential and is generally used only by those who take a pro-free dogmatic stance. While this position is quite respectable, selecting OGG audio format in 2014/2015 does not seem like a good idea because it is not widely distributed and above all it is like MP3, a destructive format.

WAV:
WAV is the first format on the list that does not deteriorate the quality extracted from the CD, and therefore offers an identical bit rate of 1411 kbps and therefore provides optimal quality.

However, the format shows its age and is limited in several ways: no space optimization (one second of silence = one second of noise) and no metadata or album cover management.

Therefore, choosing Wav audio format is similar to generating very heavy files and simply impossible to organize properly in a music database.

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An overview of the main audio formats that can be found on your computer

Codec for mp3, mpc, flac, mono, ogg vorbis and more.

For convenience, audio formats can be divided into unprofitable (unprofitable) and unprofitable (or unprofitable without losing quality).

The idea of loss formats (most common among ordinary users) stems from the idea that the human ear misunderstands all the sounds that are in a standard WAV file at 44,100 samples per second.

In this way (as in the JPG format of the images) we will drop the high frequencies, which are thought to be less different from our hearing. The more these frequencies are reduced, the more space is allocated to our track (for example, 3 MB instead of 6 MB for a few minutes of song or much more) … but it also degrades the quality of the result, as the cut frequencies are no longer so “inaudible”.

Converting to WAV from lossy formats does not provide any benefit (unless you have to process the track and save it several times, in which case the quality loss will be limited to the first step); There are also programs that are able to bring some of these high frequencies back into our tracks, such as Steinberg Clean Plus or others (such as the first versions of Easy CD Creator or other, even more professional ones), but by doing the job properly , more than No they can do a lot.

Unbearable (lossy) formats try to reduce the space occupied by the track without touching the sound; the degree of compression will be much less than the loss, but there will be no loss of quality. If it is converted back to WAV (possibly processed), the sound will be identical to the previous one.

To listen to audio tracks in various formats, we recommend using audio players that can support different formats, such as AIMP and Foobar2000.

Lost audio formats (lossy quality)

WMA (.wma): Windows Media audio format, compressed and very similar to mp3. Microsoft audio compression format. Files compressed in this format are approximately 20% smaller than MP3 files

MP3 (.mp3) is briefly suitable for the MPEG 1 III layer and identifies audio files that use this algorithm. This is a standard that removes inaudible sounds from the human ear. This way the 128 kbps mp3 track takes up 1/11 of its space in .wav or audio CD format.
Some rate 128-bit bits as “CD quality”; In fact, the frequencies that are reduced to save hard disk space are not so “inaudible”. 192 The results are starting to get good and at only 320 kbps we can talk about the quality of CDs … Until a few years ago the quality of mp3 was considered high, but now with the advent of more modern sound cards, 24 bits: we continue to use mp3 compared to other formats like like ogg or mpc, more for its diffusion and compatibility than the quality of the result. A 600 MB album in wav format will take up about 50 MB in 128 mp3 format.

To convert an audio track to mp3, it’s a good idea to use the Lame mp3 codec (free) in all the best conversion programs (download).

AAC (.aac and .mp4): A lossy format that delivers high quality (currently the highest among lossy formats), at least one step higher than mp3. A feature of this format is the ability to protect DRM from being freely copied from one platform to another (unless applications are used to protect it).

AC3 (ac3). This is the audio format used by DVDs. We usually find it at 384 kbps (and 6 channels), but it is also possible that you only have it at 2 channels and lower speeds. One of the free programs that supports it (and allows, for example, to reduce the bit rate) is BeLight (Besweet).

OGG VORBIS (.ogg) is a great open source codec. It is able to give better results than mp3, especially at low bit rates (higher quality, less space), which is less than 128 kbps (download). It is compatible with virtually all audio players (both software and audio).

MusePack (.mpc): Very large output format, especially at high bit rates (more than 192 kbps and above). The results are much better than mp3: just listen to one 192 kbps mp3 encoded track and one mpc track at the same bit rate to immediately feel the difference (in some cases without words …). Many people considered this to be the best lossy audio format, at least until mp4 was released. It is compatible with WinAmp through plug-ins and, on average, with more advanced players such as Foobar 2000.

Digital audio formats

Below is a non-exhaustive list of the most widely used digital audio formats.

AIFF – Audio Exchange File Format

Apple uses a standard audio format. This can be considered the wav equivalent of a mac environment. Audio data is organized according to PCM encoding and is not compressed. There is also a condensed option defined as AIFF-C or AIFC.

AAC – Advanced Audio Encoding

This format is based on MPEG2 and MPEG4 lossy compression standards. It was created as a successor to the mp3 format, which uses a slightly better algorithm. This allows you to get slightly better quality for the same speed.

ALAC – Apple Lossless Audio Codec

This is Apple’s lossless audio format. Also called ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder).

ATRAC (.mp3) – acoustic coding of adaptive transformation

Old Sony audio format with ATRAC compression. Files always have a .mp3 extension, but you need the ATRAC3 driver to open them. MiniDisc was a commercial advertising product that took advantage of this type of format. The codec was later improved by subsequent enhancements such as ATRAC3 (1999), ATRAC3plus (2002), and ATRAC Advanced Lossless (2006).

AS

This is the standard audio format used by Sun, Unix, and Java operating systems. Data encoding can be PCM (uncompressed) or compressed with μ-law, a-law G729 codecs. The Au audio format was introduced by Sun Microsystems. It was a format used on NeXT systems and early websites. Initially, the file did not have a header (the original data from the file) because the encoding was unique: 8 bits with µ-law compression and a sampling rate of 8000 Hz. The latest version of this format contains a header consisting of six blocks. 32 bits, an optional block of information, and finally audio data.

FLAC is a free lossless audio codec

It is an audio codec with lossy compression (without losing information). Data compression can reach 50-60% without losing quality.

M4P

It is a patented version of the MP4 AAC format with a DRM (Digital Rights Management) system developed by Apple to download music from the iTunes Music Store.

MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 (formerly ISO / IEC 14496-14: 2003) is a storage medium for multimedia data. It is mainly used to store audio / video data, but can also be used to store other types of data, such as still images and subtitles. Like all modern formats, this format allows data to be sent over the Internet in real time: this feature is implemented by adding a data path for transmission control. The only extension for files that use this codec is .mp4.

MP3 – MPEG layer III audio recording

It is currently the most widely used audio format. The MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 III audio layer, commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented lossy format. It is used for digital music use at the user (non-professional) level.

OGG

It is an open source container that supports a variety of formats, the best known being the Vorbis audio format. This format offers MP3-like audio compression, but is less common. The big difference with mp3 is the absolute free format. In terms of performance, with the same parameters, Vorbis is slightly more efficient than MP3.

The Ogg cache can handle multiple independent streams at the same time: audio, video, text (such as subtitles), and additional data (metadata).

RA and RM

This is a format developed by Real Audio to transmit audio over the Internet. The .Ra format allows you to store all the audio files you want to transfer in one file. The codec enables transmission from very low quality to high accuracy.

RAW

A RAW file can contain any type of data, but in reality it is mainly used for PCM-encoded (uncompressed) audio data. Thus, unlike the uncompressed audio format (wav, aiff), a flat file does not contain headers with information about the data itself (usually the header contains information about: sampling rate, quantitative bits, channels, type of markup used for the ideas). A typical file extension for this type is: .raw, .pcm, without the extension.

Vox

This audio format uses Dialogic ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation). This performs 4. compression. Vox files are similar to wave files, except that they do not have a header, so you need to specify frequency information.

Better audio formats

You have decided to digitize the music tracks in your audio CD collection by transferring everything to your computer. You started to examine the possibility of converting it into a format that is more convenient for you.

With a little experience in this area, however, you would like to get some advice on the subject so you can make the best decision. How do you say? Things are exactly the same and you want to know if I can help you by giving you the best audio formats? Of course yes, that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

If you allow me a few minutes of your free time, I can actually use threads and characters to tell you which audio formats are most popular, what strengths and weaknesses they have and what purposes they may be more or less convenient for. Contact. Condition to choose those who you think are actually right for you. To complete the information and give you an even more comprehensive overview of the topic, I will also indicate at the end of the article which tools you can use to carry out various conversion processes. You will find that once you have read this manual, there is no longer any doubt about what to do.

In order to? How about putting the conversation aside and finally getting to the point? Yes? Excellent! So I suggest that you don’t waste any more time and immediately focus on the topic. Make yourself comfortable in front of your trusted computer and read everything below. I am sure you can say that you are happy and satisfied with what you have learned. As always, I hope you enjoy reading.

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

MAIN AUDIO FORMATS

Even the audio formats differ in their versatility and level of compression, and even if they are not as numerous as the video formats, it is better to look at the properties to get satisfactory results according to the requirements of our work.

Microsoft Wave [Extension: WAV] It is Microsoft’s proprietary format and is certainly the most widely used. This diffusion depends on commercial aspects and the fact that it is the most supported among the competitors. It has various compressions and is a versatile and highly editable format. For this reason, it is suitable for general digital audio, both for multimedia publications (although there are certainly better formats) and for desktop video (real standard). An excellent program for processing wave files (but also other formats) is CoolEdit.

MPEG Audio (extension: MPG / MP3) MP3 stands for MPEG1 Layer3. The MPEG algorithm, the basis of MP3, emerged from the need to develop a world standard for the representation of moving images and audio. This standard was developed in 1988 for the treatment of audio and video signals and has the special feature of compressing files and reducing them by 12 times compared to their natural size.

This high-compression format is based in particular on theories of psychoacoustics: each individual has a hearing that is sensitive to frequencies from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, and in particular the man perceives sounds between 2 and 4 kHz better. In addition, some sounds mask nearby frequencies so that you cannot hear all of the sounds.

These considerations have led to the development of an algorithm that eliminates all “redundant” noise for the human ear and achieves a high level of file compression and sound quality that is comparable to the digital and can be downloaded directly to your PC.

MP3 enables good results, making small and high quality playback compatible. An established audio standard is the MPEG Layer3 version, which produces very small files of excellent quality, an excellent compromise when duplicating and creating audio files on CD. The XingMPEG encoder is an excellent software for creating MP3s.

Given the prevalence and importance of the topic on a legal level, let’s find out what it is and what benefits we can achieve by using this MPEG format.

An audio CD generally contains 60 to 78 minutes and is characterized by a quantization level of 16 bits and a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, ie 44,100 samples per second. The quantization level describes the maximum number of intensity levels that a single sample can hold: for example 8 bits = 256 levels (28), 16 bits = 65,356 levels (216). The higher the number of levels that the signal can assume, the more precise the signal reproduction.

There is approximately 650 MB of data on a normal audio CD.

Conventionally, to reduce the size, we can work in two ways: 1) Reduce the quantization: that is, convert the samples from 16 bits to 8 bits, but lose the dynamics, quality and get a lot of noise; 2) Reduce the sampling frequency. As a result, the frequency range would decrease in the event of a loss of resolution.

The MPEG format, on the other hand, reduces the amount of information stored and therefore significantly reduces the size of the files by filtering out unimportant audio information according to the models developed on this basis. From research on the perception of the human ear, you decide which information is important and which is not . These studies have enabled us to know how our brain analyzes sounds, except irrelevant ones that are imperceptible (e.g. ultrasound).

The MPEG audio format also performs this process of removing intelligent weak signals. So if there is a strong signal, the weakest signal is not perceived.

When using a high compression rate, the MPEG encoder eliminates parts of audible information that are still of minor importance. With a slight compression rate, the difference to the uncompressed original is minimal.

Layers I, II, III can be viewed as the layers through which the MPEG format has evolved. All layers are based on the same perceptual coding scheme, the complexity of which increases for each of them. Layer II has superior quality at lower bit rates than Layer I; However, the most complex coding system currently available is Layer III,

MP4 (Extension: MP4) is an audio compression technology recently launched by Global Music Outlet (GMO) under license from AT&T Labs (January 99). As you understand, it is a further development of the MP3 format and seems to offer the ability to offer it a higher compression factor, which should even reach a factor of 16. Although the name is very similar, conceptually it has nothing to do with layer 3 and is actually in direct competition with it. Compressed MP4 files are presented as executable Win9x or WinNT files and offer the relatively encapsulated player.

Audio exchange (extension: AIF / AIFF) Format created to standardize the various audio standards between PC and Machintosh.

Microsoft NetShow (Extension: ASF) Audio extension of the format for streaming audio / video on the web.

Yamaha SoundVQ [Extension: VQF] Audio format released by Yamaha in direct competition with MP3.

Everything you need to know about audio files … compressed and uncompressed

Regardless of whether you’re listening to MP3 files or high-definition audio, it’s time to find out exactly which file format is best for your needs.

As you organize your digital music collection, you may be impressed by the number of different audio file formats you have collected over the years. For this reason (and since a good review doesn’t hurt anyone) we’d like to deepen the discussion of the most common audio file formats, explain the differences and explain why you should be interested in learning more about them. Whether you’re listening to low quality MP3 files, slightly better AAC tracks, or high definition audio in FLAC or WAV, it’s time to find out exactly what you’re dealing with and which file format best suits your needs.

File formats and codecs

Below is a list of all common audio file formats and the differences between them.

-AAC (no high resolution): Apple’s alternative to MP3. It’s a compressed audio format, but it sounds better than MP3 and is used to download music from iTunes and stream via Apple Music.

-AIFF (high resolution): Apple’s alternative to WAV, but with better metadata support. It’s an uncompressed and lossless format, but it’s not very popular.

-DSD (High Resolution) – The uncompressed single bit format for super audio CDs. It is available in the 2.8 MHz, 5.6 MHz and 11.2 MHz variants, but due to its high-quality codec it is (currently) not suitable for streaming.

-FLAC (High Resolution) – This lossless compression format supports high-resolution sampling rates, takes up about half the WAV space, and stores metadata. It is license-free and is the preferred format for downloading and storing albums in high resolution or CD quality. The disadvantage is that it is not compatible with Apple (therefore it is not compatible with iTunes).

-MP3 (not high definition): Lossy, compressed format that guarantees small file sizes, but is far from the best possible audio quality. However, it is still very convenient for storing music on smartphones and other mobile devices and is widely used.

-MQA (High Resolution) – A lossless compression format with high resolution files for more efficient transmission. It is used for high-resolution streaming from Tidal Masters and other similar services.

-OGG (not high resolution): Sometimes you can find him by his full name, Ogg Vorbis. An open source and compressed alternative to MP3 and AAC that is not limited by patents. This format is used (at 320 kbit / s) to stream Spotify.

-WAV (High Resolution) – The standard format in which all audio CDs are encoded. Excellent sound quality and no compression, which means large files (especially for high-resolution files). However, metadata (album art, artist information, and song title) are hardly supported.

-WMA Lossless – An uncompressed embodiment of Windows Media Audio, but is no longer supported by smartphones or tablets.

The 10 most common audio formats: which one to use?

Audio files are available in all types and sizes. And although we are all familiar with MP3, what do you think of AAC, FLAC, OGG or WMA? Why are there so many audio standards? Which are important and which to ignore?

It’s actually quite easy to find that all audio formats fall into three main categories. Once you know what the categories mean, you can simply choose a format within the category that best suits your needs.

Uncompressed audio formats

Uncompressed audio consists of actual sound waves that have been captured without further processing and converted into a digital format. As a result, uncompressed audio files are usually the most accurate, but take up a lot of space, about 34MB per minute for 96-bit and 96-bit stereo.

Audio file format: PCM

PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation, a digital representation of analog audio signals. Analog tones exist as waveforms, and in order to convert a waveform into digital bits, the tone must be sampled and recorded at certain intervals (or pulses).

This digital audio format has a “sample rate” (how often a sample is taken) and a “bit depth” (how many bits are used to represent each sample). No compression is required. The digital recording is an almost exact representation of the analog sound.

PCM is the most common audio format used on CD and DVD. There is a PCM subtype called Linear Pulse Code Modulation, in which samples are taken at linear intervals. LPCM is the most common form of PCM, so the two terms are almost interchangeable at this point.

Audio file format: WAV

WAV stands for Waveform Audio File Format (at some point also called Audio for Windows, but no longer). It is a standard developed by Microsoft and IBM in 1991.

Many people believe that all WAV files are uncompressed audio files, but that’s not exactly true. WAV is actually a Windows container for various audio formats. This means that a WAV file may contain compressed audio, but this is rarely used.

Most WAV files contain uncompressed audio in PCM format. The WAV file is just a container for PCM encoding, so it is more suitable for use on Windows systems. However, Mac systems can generally open WAV files with ease.

Audio file format: AIFF

AIFF stands for Audio Interchange File Format. Similar to how Microsoft and IBM developed WAV for Windows, AIFF is a format developed by Apple for Mac systems in 1988.

Similar to WAV files, AIFF files can contain several types of audio formats. For example, there is a compressed version called AIFF-C and another version called Apple Loops that is used by GarageBand and Logic Audio. Both use the same AIFF extension.

Most AIFF files contain uncompressed audio in PCM format. The AIFF file is just a container for PCM encoding, making it more suitable for use on Mac systems. However, Windows systems can generally open AIFF files with ease.

Lossy compression audio formats.

Lossy compression occurs when some data is lost during the compression process. Compression is important because uncompressed audio takes up a lot of space.

In other words, lossy compression means that the sound quality and fidelity for smaller files are affected. If you are hurt, you will hear artifacts and other oddities in the audio. But if done correctly, you won’t feel the difference.

Audio file format: MP3

MP3 stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. It was released in 1993 and is becoming increasingly popular. It is the world’s most popular audio format for music files. There is a reason why we had “MP3 players” but no “OGG players”!

The main purpose of MP3 is in three ways: 1) removing all audio that is out of the normal human hearing range, and 2) reducing the quality of inaudible sounds, then 3) compressing all the other audio as efficiently as possible.

Almost every digital device in the world with audio playback can read and play MP3 files, be it PC, Mac, Android, iPhone, Smart TV or anything else. If you need a universal device, MP3 will never disappoint you.

Note: MP3 is not the same as MP4!

Audio file format: AAC

AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding. It was developed in 1997 as the successor to MP3 and although it has become popular as a format to be used, it has never surpassed MP3 as the most popular.

The compression algorithm used by AAC is much more advanced and technical than MP3. So if you compare the same recording in MP3 and AAC format with the same bit rates, the AAC generally has better audio quality.

Although MP3 is a more popular format, AAC is still widely used today. In fact, this is the standard audio compression method used by YouTube, Android, iOS, iTunes, later Nintendo laptops, and later PlayStation.

Audio file format: OGG (Vorbis)

OGG represents nothing. In fact, it’s not even a compression format. OGG is a multimedia container that can contain all types of compression formats. However, Vorbis files are most commonly used. Therefore, these audio files are called Ogg Vorbis files.

Vorbis was first released in 2000 and is growing in popularity for two reasons: 1) it conforms to the principles of open source software and 2) it works significantly better than most other lossy compression formats (ie) this results in a smaller file size for an equivalent sound quality.

MP3 and AAC are so strong that OGG struggles to get into the spotlight – not many devices support them natively, but they do improve over time. It is currently used primarily by supporters of hardcore open source software.

Audio file format: WMA (lossy)

WMA stands for Windows Media Audio. It was first published in 1999 and has gone through several developments since then, always keeping the same name and WMA extension. It is a proprietary format created by Microsoft.

Similar to AAC and OGG, WMA should fix some of the errors in the MP3 compression method, and it turns out that WMA’s approach to compression is very similar to that of AAC and OGG. Yes, in terms of the quality of objective compression, WMA is really better than MP3.

However, since WMA is proprietary, it is not supported by many devices and platforms. In addition, it offers no real advantage over AAC or OGG. If MP3 is not good enough, it is only more practical to use one instead of WMA.

Audio formats with lossless compression.

The opposite lossy compression is lossless compression, in which the size of an audio file is reduced without loss of data between the source audio file and the compressed audio file.

The disadvantage is that lossless compressed audio files are larger than lossy compressed audio files, up to 2 times 5 times larger for the same source file.

Audio file format: FLAC

FLAC is an abbreviation for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Maybe a bit on the nose, but it has quickly become one of the most popular lossless formats since its launch in 2001.

The good news is that FLAC can compress an original source file by up to 60 percent without losing a single bit of data. What’s even better is that FLAC is a free, open source audio file format, so there are no intellectual property restrictions.

FLAC is compatible with most major programs and devices and is the primary alternative to MP3 for music. You basically get the full quality of uncompressed audio with half the file size. That is why many see FLAC as the best audio format.

Audio file format: ALAC

ALAC stands for Apple Lossless Audio Codec. It was developed and published as a proprietary format in 2004, but became open source and copyright-free in 2011. ALAC is sometimes referred to as Apple Lossless.

While ALAC is good, it is somewhat less efficient than FLAC in terms of compression. However, Apple users cannot choose between the two, as iTunes and iOS offer native support for ALAC and no support for FLAC.

Audio file format: WMA (lossless)

WMA stands for Windows Media Audio. We already discussed this in the lossy compression section, but we explained this here because there is a lossless alternative called WMA Lossless that uses the same extension. Confused, I know.

Compared to FLAC and ALAC, WMA Lossless is the worst compression efficiency, but not much. Since it is a proprietary format, it is not suitable for open source software enthusiasts, but is natively supported on Windows and Mac systems.

The most used audio formats

As you can imagine, when we talk about digital formats in the field of sound, the range is wide. When choosing the one that best suits our needs, we need to think about several questions. To do this, the first thing to do is to know the most used audio formats.

We start by clarifying the concepts of bit depth and sample rate, which are essential for understanding how audio formats work. These are two measurements that indicate the quality of a digital audio file.

When we read the specifications for audio formats and find, for example, 32 bit / 192 kHz and 24 bit / 96 kHz, these figures refer to “bit depth” and “sampling frequency”, respectively. They tell us the amount of information transmitted by the different formats and the quality of the sound. The more times a device reads samples, the higher the quality.

Audio formats

-MP3: These files weigh very little for any device to read. The downside is that the quality of compression is sacrificed.
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-WAV (Waveform Audio File Format): These are higher resolution files than MP3, an audio track which is coded with what is called Pulse Code Modulation (PCM). Analog audio tracks are encoded and converted to digital so that they can have sample rates and bit depth.

-AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format): it is very similar to WAV and also uses PCM to encode analog audio tracks and present them in digital format. Indeed, AIFF and WAV files are more or less interchangeable.
In short, when we talk about a file in WAV or AIFF audio format, we are talking about a good quality piece of sound.

What audio formats exist? All you need to know.

FLAC, WAV, AIFF, DSD … these are just some of the acronyms you can find when looking for a digital format. They are also accompanied by technical data such as sample rates and bit depth. So many terms can leave you more misplaced than a chicken in a dance. And unless you are an expert in digital sound, the process to choose the audio format that best suits your needs can be a mess. But if they explain it to you, the subject is relatively simple. That is why in Culturasonora we have prepared a complete guide on the different audio formats used.

Audio formats: OGG vs Opus vs FLAC vs ALAC

Nowadays a lot of the music that is heard sounds through online platforms. It is worth talking about the audio formats used by services such as Spotify, Tidal, or Apple Music.
What is the OGG format?
OGG audio formats are like supercharged MP3s. They are compressed audio files, which means that they have a size that allows transmission via WiFi, but at the same time they avoid damage that is usually generated in the compression process. Spotify uses these OGG formats. Depending on how much you want to pay for this service you can listen to them through this portal with different sample rates: from 96 kbps, to Premium 320 kbps files. The audio quality provided by Spotify for Premium users is quite good.
What is the Opus format?
Opus is a new codec that uses the Ogg container. It was developed by the same creators of FLAC, with the help of Mozilla and Skype. It can handle up to 510 kbps and 48 kHz. This new format stands out for its low latency, so it is ideal for online audio streams. Its average latency of 22.5 ms is well below other codecs. It is versatile, open and more and more platforms are adopting it.
What is the FLAC format?
With FLAC audio codecs the sound quality increases with respect to the OGG. They are Lossless, or lossless, audio formats that perform a great trick: they compress file sizes up to 60% without losing quality. In addition, they allow the transmission of sample rates of up to 1,411 kbps, which is much higher than any other audio format. This is the format used by the Tidal platform, the best service for high quality audio transmissions.
What is the ALAC format?
Finally we have the ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec). This format is basically Apple’s alternative to FLAC. It is the format used by Itunes and for Apple Music broadcasts.