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The audio formats with the best sound quality

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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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Best digital quality audio formats

Best digital quality audio formats

WAV vs MP3

It is often a measure of the quality of a track. There is a lot of debate about which is the best music format. So I recently witnessed a similar dispute. Not virtual, but real. In general, I decided to write an article on audio formats and try to explain in human language which is the best audio format. I’ll try to avoid abstruse terms and feature descriptions, so as not to hurt the brains of readers again.

High quality audio formats

I immediately admit that I am not going to sing praises in honor of any particular audio format, just as I am not going to “disappoint” anyone. Let everyone decide for themselves. I will not go into the “jungle” and review the most famous formats of high quality music.

I believe that these disputes are conducted by people, to put it mildly, not well versed in this matter. Because professionals (that is, people who know what they are doing and why they are doing it) will not do it. With today’s abundance of audio formats, anyone who needs it will find what they need. Agree, a dispute between a tractor driver and a driver about which is better – a tractor or a car will look silly. For some purposes a tractor, for others a machine. Here it is the same.

WAV is rightly considered the highest quality music format. This audio format is not compressed or lossy. Used for recording and processing sound, this is the highest quality sound, as the WAV recording is not compressed. Encoded to any other audio format. Well, as a result, it “weighs” a lot, so it is mainly used for sound recording.

Lossy audio compression

I’ll start with the well-known and widely used (though not always loved) MP3 format. This audio format is actively used everywhere and everywhere, where it is needed and where it is not needed. But this does not mean that it is not worthy of the place it occupies in its niche. Very worthy. Although he has been “sitting” in his niche for about two decades, no one has “kicked” him out of there yet. And there were many who wanted to say it. And the main favorite of them is WMA (Windows Media), which was conceived by Microsoft as an alternative to MP3. As a result, it is an alternative and it is, despite the best efforts of the developers. The next character is OGG. Despite the broader possibilities than MP3, for example, it never received widespread acceptance. Although it is compatible with many operating systems. Perhaps the AAC audio format is worth mentioning, which was supposed to change on the relay. Encoding quality has been improved and compression loss reduced. But Ay.

The main advantage of these formats is their small size. The downside is the loss of quality.

Lossless audio compression
FLAC is perhaps the most popular lossless audio format and encoding codec. Music lovers are gradually switching to this format. WavPack competes with it, but it is not that popular. It’s the same story with Apple Lossless, which reduces the size to 60%.

Here the story is exactly the opposite: the quality is better and the size is greater.

Skeptics say that it is almost impossible to distinguish MP3 (320 kbps) from Losless by ear. “And if there is no difference, why pay more?” In fact, on ordinary equipment, it is quite difficult to feel the difference in audio formats, even for music lovers. But there are those who immediately feel this difference (they personally attended the experiment). But when listening to a good device, the difference is huge. The problem is that not everyone can afford a good device.

Compressed using special lossless audio codecs, it can be restored with absolute precision if desired.

If you take a normal audio CD with analog sound, record it in WAV format for uncompressed sound, then compress WAV using lossless codec, then decompress the resulting sound file into WAV and burn the result to a blank CD, you can get two completely identical audio files COMPACT DISCS.

The advantage of lossless for storing an audio collection is that the quality of the recordings is much higher than that of lossy codecs and they take up less space than uncompressed audio. It is true that lossy files are smaller than lossless music files. Most modern playback programs understand the lossless format. Programs that cannot play it can easily learn it using the lossless plugin. What are lossless audio formats?

The best popular audio formats

The best popular audio formats

I looked around the forest of audio formats for normal use and chose the 5 most important ones. It is true that, in part, a bit simplified, a bit rough in presentation. I refrain from differentiating the exact settings of the respective codecs, that would be too complex.

I also don’t want to get into the nasty topic of DRM. The most important one I dropped is probably Vorbis. . Of course, I assume that the correct settings are used when encoding and that a high quality level is selected.

1st place:
MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3)

The most widespread digital format, with good encoding (for example, with LAME) in high bit rates, a format of the highest quality and transparency.

Quality (4.5 / 5 points)
Popularity (5/5 points)
Compression (4/5 points)
Total: 13.5

2nd place:
AAC (advanced audio coding)

It became famous especially for its use in the Apple iPod, a codec that has small advantages over MP3 at low bit rates due to technical developments.

Quality (4/5 points)
Popularity (4.5 / 5 points)
Compression (4.5 / 5 points)
Total: 13

3rd place:
WMA (Windows Media Audio)

Windows proprietary format. Of course, Microsoft has the reins here, so variable format doesn’t run on all playback devices. Otherwise, no major strengths and weaknesses and, for example, the standard format with Napster.

Quality (4/5 points)
Popularity (4/5 points)
Compression (4/5 points)

Total: 12

4th place:
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) !!

As the only lossless codec on this list. FLAC works in something like a ZIP program: the original can be restored from the compressed file by approximately 50% without restrictions. In times of low hard disk space, a real alternative, especially since many playback devices can play this format. My winner of hearts, the popularity will certainly increase in the future.

Quality (5/5 points)
Popularity (3.5 / 5 points)
Compression (3/5 points)

Total: 11.5

5th place:
Wav

The original format of the normal audio CD data. Impeccable quality and still widespread thanks to the well-known compact disc. It actually started out of the competition because it’s completely unzipped.

Quality (5/5 points)
Popularity (5/5 points)
Compression (0/5 points)
Total: 10

What is the best audio format for listening to music?

Although the MP3 format is the most popular of all available audio formats, it is not the only one, some such as FLAC, WMA, OGG and others, have features that, depending on what you want, can be very useful in certain occasions

Here I show you a summary of what to expect when you are looking for the best audio format to listen to music.

As a general rule, we can classify audio formats into two categories: those that retain all quality and those that lead to loss of quality in sound or information.

Those who retain all audio quality come from pure sources such as CDs, while those who lose quality sacrifice this information to save space.

Formats that preserve audio quality:

FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec or FLAC, for its acronym in English, is one of the formats that best preserves audio quality. Its compression algorithm is excellent and does not generate quality losses, it is open source and the file size when compressed is much smaller
Apple Lossless: known as ALAC is very similar to FLAC, but not as efficient as this, so these files are larger, although they have the unconditional support of iOS, which FLAC does not have

APE: The problem with this format is that it is not very compatible with the vast majority of players, but it is similar to the FLAC or ALAC format in terms of audio quality. Being very compressed makes the computer’s processor work faster so it is not recommended in low power computing equipment
WAV and AIFF: they are not compression formats, but exact copies of the original content, differing in the way they save the data. While AIFF was created by Apple, WAV is more universal, but both take too much disk space.

Formats with loss of audio quality:

MP3: MPEG Audio Layer III or MP3, as we all know them, is the most common format you can find
ACC: is more efficient than MP3, files in this format are smaller and is very popular on iTunes
OGG Vorbis: it is a free and open source alternative to MP3 and ACC, it is not restricted by patents but not supported by many players
WMA: this is the proprietary format of Microsoft very similar to MP3, without great advantages over the others
Which audio format to choose
You may be interested: «It’s proven: classical music modifies your genes and makes you smarter»
It is more recommended to choose MP3 or AAC, since many players support them, in addition, if they are encoded with a high bitrate they are almost indistinguishable from the original source. However, if what you want is to burn your music, I recommend formats like FLAC, then you can convert everything to other formats without losing audio quality.