We know that when you read the word “listen to music” automatically you think of the old and reliable mp3. However, there are multiple formats with individual characteristics that you should take into account if you want to change your acoustic experience.
As a general rule, audio files are classified into 2 types: those that retain all the quality and those that, in order to save space, eliminate quality. The mp3 is in the second type of files.
Check the Pros and Cons of the different audio formats.
Formats that conserve Quality:
–FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec for its acronym in English. One of the formats that best preserves the 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
-A THE C; or Apple Lossless is similar to FLAC, but the files it generates are quite large. It has iOS support
–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. Both take too much space on the hard drive.
Formats with loss of audio quality:
–MP3: MPEG Audio Layer III or MP3, is the most common format you can find
–ACC: it is more efficient than MP3, the files are smaller and it is very popular in iTunes
–OGG Vorbis: it is a free and open source alternative to MP3 and ACC, it is not restricted by patents. However, it is not supported by different players.
–WMA: Created by Microsoft to be the direct competition of MP3, practically the same as the others.
And what is the best audio format?
Making a cold and mathematical evaluation, it turned out that the FLAC format is the best. It does not lose quality, compresses enough without sacrificing quality. It plays on many players … however it has failed to return almost “universal2 as the mp3 did.
For people who do not need extreme audio quality, the mp3 may well be your best ocpion, since it is all in mp3.
One advantage is that Mp4Gain can normalize both formats and equalize them, change their pitchs, their tempos, etc.
That is, Mp4Gain allows you to manage all these formats, you will choose according to your needs.
