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The audio formats with the best sound quality

First of all, divide all types of music files into three parts as follows:

Uncompressed file formats: .WAV, .AIFF

Lossless compression formats: .FLAC, .ALAC (Apple Lossless)

Destructive compression formats: .MP3, .AAC, .WMA, .OGG

Below are their respective advantages and disadvantages.

1. Uncompressed file format
Uncompressed music files are just like the concept of Raw files. Essentially no compression will of course have the best sound quality. (The sample rate and bit rate of the original recording are also very important. If the compressed music file is converted to an uncompressed file, the music won’t magically improve the sound quality.)

The most common disadvantage of uncompressed files is the file size. Generally, the file size of a song is around 25 ~ 40 MB. While that capacity is no longer an issue for cloud hard drives, it is still an issue for email. Also big (25MB max for Gmail attachments). Also, some portable music players or devices may not be able to play such music files.

Advantages: original sound reproduction, no compression, lossless, easier to use in post production

Disadvantages: large file format, fewer supported devices

2. Lossless compression format
The term “compressed and lossless” seems contradictory, but compression does not necessarily affect sound quality. More precisely, it’s more like “compressed to save space”. It’s like compressing a high quality file into a .ZIP and decompressing it when you want to use it, the quality of the file will not be affected.

Therefore, this type of file has a compressed capacity, but the file will be decompressed during playback to restore sound quality. Although the concept of reducing capacity without affecting sound quality is great, the downside is that support for this format is extremely low and in order to decompress the file during playback, an additional codec is required to use it, and it will. also take some performance.

Advantages: small file capacity (about 1/2 ~ 1/3 lossless files), good sound quality

Disadvantages: Decompression can eat performance when used, and support from hardware or software is extremely low

3. Destructive compression format
The destructive compression format is currently the most common music file format, the main reason is that it has the greatest compatibility with portable devices (mobile phones, MP3 players, etc.), and the files are small and have a space of limited storage. , users can store more music (compressed capacity is about one-tenth of lossless sound quality), and most of the music provided by today’s streaming media is files in this format. There is always a price to pay for smaller files. Compared to lossless formats, this destructive compression will affect the audio range that the original sound can present and will cause some distortion. So, to be safe, keep the compression rate above 320 kbps as much as possible.

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What is the best audio format?

Many are known, but there is always the question of what is the best audio format. The main and most recognized for listening to music are MP3, Wav, FLAC and Ogg.

But, to choose the best audio format, you must first know that they have several conformations, and you can always choose the best. Music always goes everywhere, at home in front of the computer, in a living room with a hi-fi system, with headphones on public transport or when playing a sport. Music that gives a special meaning at all times and that encourages listening.

There are many ways to take advantage of it, but this is usually done in digital format. In audio files, there is a wide variety and normally many still use MP3 for convenience. But there are less popular alternatives that seek to provide a different, better experience. For those who do not know it, there are a number of main sound systems.

The best audio format

Beyond the fact that the MP3 format is the most popular of all the audio formats available, it is not the only one. Some others like “FLAC”, “WMA”, “OGG” have certain characteristics which, depending on what you want, can be very useful on certain occasions.

In technology, audio formats can generally be classified into 2 categories. There are those which preserve all the quality and those which involve losses of quality of the sound or information.

Those that preserve the quality of the audio are those that come from pure sources such as CDs. This is how those who lose quality and sacrifice this information must save space.

Audio quality formats

“FLAC” is a lossless audio codec or “FLAC”. It is one of the formats that best preserves audio quality and its compression algorithm is excellent. It is open source, does not generate quality losses and the file size because it is compressed, is much smaller.

Apple Lossless is known as “ALAC” and is very similar to “FLAC”. The difference is that it is not as efficient, so these files are larger, although they still have unconditional support for iOS, which “FLAC” does not.

“APE” is another and although the problem with this format is that it is not compatible with the vast majority of players, it is considered to be similar to the “FLAC” or “ALAC” format in terms of audio quality. . As it is highly compressed, it accelerates the functioning of the computer’s processor and it is therefore not recommended to use it in low-consumption computer equipment.

“WAV” and “AIFF” are not compression formats, but rather exact copies of the original content and differ in the way they record the data. “AIFF” was created by Apple and “WAV” is more universal, but both have too much disk space.

Formats with loss of audio quality

MP3, MPEG Audio Layer III or MP3, as many people already know, is the most common format that can be found. “ACC” is very popular on iTunes and is considered more efficient than MP3 because files in this format are smaller.

OGG Vorbis is one of the free and open source alternatives to MP3 and ACC. It is not limited by patents, but it is also not supported by many players. WMA is Microsoft’s proprietary format and is very similar to MP3, but without much advantage over the others.

Which audio format to choose?

The most recommended is “MP3” or “AAC” because many players support it. In addition, if they are encoded with a high bit rate, they can hardly be distinguished from the original source. However, if you want to burn music, formats like “FLAC” are recommended, because you can then convert everything to other formats without losing audio quality.

Once the audio formats are known, when choosing, the differences between each must be taken into account. In general, what the experts recommend is to use “MP3” or “AAC” as they are compatible with most players and the quality of both is very similar to that of the original source, especially if it is encoded with a high bit rate. Unless you have a specific need, “MP3” and “AAC” are the most recommended options.

However, one thing to know is that to store music in lossless formats, there is no “FLAC”. You probably won’t notice any higher quality, but it’s good for storing music if you plan to convert it to other formats later. In these cases, “FLAC” is always recommended, and it is also possible to choose the format without loss or degradation of quality