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Audio Basics

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Audio Basics

Common audio formats

Common WAV files use uncompressed PCM encoding, which makes the quality of WAV files extremely high and the volume surprisingly high. For PCM WAV, I’m afraid only lossless compressed audio can have the same quality. What we usually see mp3, the quality of wma (excluding wmalossless) and wav is much worse! You can see this on the spectrum, even if you compare 320kbps mp3 to wav, it will be inferior!

MP3 audio format
Introduction to the MP3 audio format
The full name of MP3 is Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer III. One of the most popular lossy compression and digital audio coding formats today, it is designed to greatly reduce the amount of audio data, while for most users the playback quality is not significantly different from the original. original uncompressed audio. It was invented and standardized in 1991 by a group of engineers from the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft research organization in Erlangen, Germany.

The so-called MP3 also refers to the audio part in the MPEG standard, ie the MPEG audio layer. It is divided into 3 layers according to the difference of compression quality and encoding processing, corresponding to *.mp1/ *.mp2/ *.mp3 these 3 types of sound files respectively. It should be remembered that compression of MPEG audio files is lossy compression. MPEG3 audio encoding has a high compression ratio of 10:1~12:1, while basically keeping the lower part of the audio undistorted, but at the expense of sound files. the quality of high-frequency audio from 12 KHz to 16 KHz is changed by file size. Music files of the same length are stored in the *.mp3 format, usually only *.wav1/10 of the file, and the sound quality is lower than the . files in CD format or WAV format. Due to its small file size and good sound quality, no other audio format can match it at the beginning of its existence, which provides good conditions for the development of the *.mp3 format.

Characteristics of the MP3 audio format
MP3 is a data compression format.
It discards pulse code modulation (PCM) audio data that is not important to the human ear (similar to how JPEG is lossy image compression), resulting in a much smaller file size.
MP3 audio can be compressed at different bit rates, providing a variety of trade-offs between data size and sound quality. The MP3 format uses a hybrid conversion mechanism to convert time domain signals to frequency domain signals.
32-band polyphase integrator filter (PQF).
Modified discrete cosine filter of 36 or 12 taps (MDCT); each subband size can be independently selected between 0…1 and 2…31.
MP3 not only has extensive client software support, but also has a lot of hardware support, such as portable media players (referring to MP3 players), DVD and CD players.

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Audio Basics

Common audio formats

Audio file format specifically refers to the file format in which the audio data is stored. There are many different formats.

The general way to get audio data is to sample (quantize) the audio voltage at a fixed time interval and store the result at a certain resolution (eg CDDA is 16 bits or 2 bytes per sample). The sampling time interval can have different standards, such as CDDA adopts 44100 times per second, DVD adopts 48000 or 96000 times per second. Therefore, sample rate, resolution, and number of channels (for example, 2 for stereo) are key parameters for audio file formats.

There are two main types of audio file formats:

Lossless formats like WAV, PCM, ALS, ALAC, TAK, FLAC, APE, WavPack (WV)
Lossy formats like MP3, AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis
The lossy file format is based on a model of acoustic psychology that removes sounds that are difficult or impossible for humans to hear, such as a very loud sound followed by a very low sound. MP3s fall into this category of files.

Lossless audio formats (such as FLAC) have a compression ratio of around 2:1, no data/quality loss when decompressed, and the data produced by decompression is exactly the same as the uncompressed data. If you need to keep the original quality of your music, you should choose a lossless audio codec. For example, with the free FLAC lossless audio codec, you can store the equivalent of 20 music CDs on a DVD-R disc.

The development history and technical characteristics of the audio format are briefly presented below. Specifically they include: WAV, MP3, WMA, RA, APE, AAC, etc.

WAV audio format
Introduction to the WAV audio format
WAV is a sound file format developed by Microsoft, it is used to save the audio information resources of the WINDOWS platform and is supported by the WINDOWS platform and its applications. The “*.WAV” format supports various compression algorithms, such as MSADPCM, CCITT A LAW, and supports a variety of audio bits, sample rates, and channels. The standard format for WAV files is the same as the CD format, with a sample rate of 44.1K and a rate of 88K/sec, 16-bit quantization.

On the Windows platform, WAV based on PCM encoding is the best supported audio format. All audio software can support it perfectly. Because it can meet higher sound quality requirements, WAV is also the preferred format for music creation and editing. Suitable for storing musical material. Therefore, WAV based on PCM encoding is used as an intermediate format and is often used in the conversion of other encodings, such as MP3 to WMA.

Characteristics of the WAV audio format
Advantages of the WAV audio format include: simple encoding/decoding (almost direct storage of the signal from an analog-to-digital converter (ADC)), universal acceptance/support, and lossless storage.

The main disadvantage of the WAV format is the required audio storage space. This can be a significant issue for small storage limitations or low bandwidth applications.

What audio formats exist. Is there a difference between MP3, AAC, FLAC audio formats and which one should I use?

What audio formats exist. Is there a difference between MP3, AAC, FLAC audio formats and which one should I use?

Audio file formats

Almost any computer user periodically listens to music on it, which is stored electronically. There are many formats for storing music, each of them was developed for specific tasks:

Audio File Formats

Bit rate is the amount of information used during encoding for 1 second playback. The higher it is, the less the distortion and the sound matches the original as much as possible.
Lossless – Lossless audio encoding. By converting to lossless formats and vice versa, we get exactly the same sound.
Lossy: compression formats designed for the fact that a person simply cannot physically hear certain frequencies that are skipped during conversion. At the same time, it can significantly save the amount of disk space.
Audio CD
The format that ushered in the era of digital sound after the transition from vinyl records. It was adopted as a standard in 1979 by Philips and Sony. In the audio CD format, music can be physically stored only on optical media; when recording to a hard disk, the audio track must be converted.

Due to the highest sound quality and the ability to play on any player, the format is still very popular, even though it is quite old.

Flac
Perhaps the most common format for storing lossless music. Compared to other lossless audio compression codecs, flac developed by xiph.org is completely free and offers the smallest output file size.

MP3
The most popular music format accepted as an unofficial standard for any playback device. Its popularity is based on the fact that because it cuts frequencies inaudible to the ear with practically the same sound quality, an mp3 file is 30% of the original lossless file.

The first audio track in mp3 format appeared in 1994. One of the reasons for its popularity is the ability to store a variety of additional information on audio file tags and the convenience of organizing a music library.

Ogg
A new lossy format that was launched in 2002 as a free alternative to paid formats. Unlike its predecessors, mp3 in particular, it allows the possibility of multi-channel encoding and multi-channel audio storage. It is most used in video games.

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.

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.