Comparison of common audio formats: which one to use?
Audio files come in all types and sizes. And although we are all familiar with MP3, how about AAC, FLAC, OGG or WMA? Why are there so many standards? Which ones should you care about and which ones can you ignore?
It’s actually pretty simple once you understand that all audio formats fall into three main categories. Once you know which category you want, all you have to do is choose the format in that category that best suits your needs.
Uncompressed audio formats
Uncompressed audio is exactly what it sounds like: real sound waves that have been captured and digitized without any additional processing. As a result, uncompressed audio files tend to be the most accurate, but they take up A LOT of disk space, around 34MB per minute for 96kHz 24-bit stereo.
PCM
PCM stands for Pulse-Code Modulation, the digital representation of raw analog audio signals. Analog sounds exist as signals, and to convert a signal into digital bits, the sound must be sampled and recorded at specific intervals (or pulses).
Therefore, 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). There is no compression. Digital recording is a nearly accurate representation of analog audio.
PCM is the most common audio format used on CDs and DVDs. There is a subtype of PCM called linear pulse code modulation, where samples are taken at linear intervals. LPCM is the most common form of PCM, so at this stage the two terms are almost interchangeable.
Wav
WAV stands for Waveform Audio File Format (also called Audio for Windows at one point, but not anymore). It is a standard developed by Microsoft and IBM in 1991.
Many people assume that all WAV files are uncompressed audio files, but this is not entirely true. WAV is actually a Windows container for audio formats. This means that a WAV file can contain compressed audio, but it is rarely used for this.
Most WAV files contain uncompressed PCM audio. The WAV file is just a wrapper for PCM encoding, which makes it more suitable for use on Windows systems. However, Mac systems can generally open WAV files without any problem.
AIFF
AIFF stands for Audio Interchange File Format. Like Microsoft and IBM developed WAV for Windows, AIFF is a format that Apple developed for Mac systems in 1988.
Like WAV files, AIFF files can contain various types of audio. For example, there is a compressed version called AIFF-C and another version called Apple Loops that use GarageBand and Logic Audio, and they all use the same AIFF extension.
Most AIFF files contain uncompressed PCM audio. The AIFF file is simply a wrapper for PCM encoding, which makes it more suitable for use on Mac systems. However, Windows systems can generally open AIFF files without any problem.
audio file signal format
Lossy compressed audio formats
Lossy compression is a form of compression that loses data during the compression process. In the context of audio, this means that we sacrifice quality and fidelity for file size. The good news is that most of the time you won’t be able to tell the difference.
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However, if the audio is compressed too much or too often, you will start to hear artifacts and other oddities that become more and more noticeable.
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MP3
MP3 stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. It was released in 1993 and quickly gained popularity, eventually becoming the world’s most popular audio format for music files. There’s a reason we have “MP3 players” and not “OGG players” …
The main pursuit of MP3 is to remove all audio data that exists outside the audible range of most normal people and reduce the quality of sounds that are not easy to hear, and then compress all other audio data from the as efficiently as possible.
Almost every digital audio capable device in the world can read and play MP3 files, whether we are talking about PC, Mac, Android, iPhone, Smart TV or anything else. When you need versatility, MP3 will never let you down.
Please note that MP3 is not the same as MP4
although their similar names may indicate otherwise.
ACC
AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding. It was developed in 1997 as the successor to MP3.
