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What are the most popular audio formats?

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What are the most popular audio formats?

There are dozens of audio files that we can use to convert a song, but the really useful ones can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

When we think of an audio file, most of us immediately think of MP3. Without a doubt, it’s one of the most popular audio formats, but it’s not the only one. Let’s see what are the most popular audio formats and what are the differences in use. And we have to choose that according to our needs.

There are different categories of audio files. First we defined the formats as uncompressed. The word itself defines this section of the file. In this case, the recorded sound waves are actually converted into a digital format without further processing. What does it all mean? In files that are very difficult to save and take up a lot of space. In order to simplify the storage of audio files and to reduce the load, formats with lossy data compression were created. These sacrifice some quality in favor of the small storage space required.

To fix this error, which represents the loss of quality in favor of file size, compressed audio formats were created without loss of data. Obviously, they’re not small files like lossy compression, but they’re still smaller than uncompressed. However, it must be said that these types of formats are only widespread in certain cases.

PCM

PCM is the most common and widely used audio format on CDs and DVDs that we have at home. It is the faithful conversion of analog audio into a digital file. It is no coincidence that it is an uncompressed audio format. Remember that analog sounds exist as waveforms. In order to convert a sound wave into digital bits, the sound must be sampled and recorded at certain intervals.

WAV

WAV stands for Waveform Audio File Format (previously it was also called Audio for Windows, now it is no longer). It is a standard developed by Microsoft and IBM in 1991. WAV files can contain compressed and uncompressed audio formats. In most cases, however, they are used for uncompressed people. Although it was developed for Windows, it can also be safely opened on a Mac.

MP3

This is without a doubt the most popular audio format. It was released in 1993 and over the years its success has increased thanks to the combination with the pieces of music. Why are they used so often? Quite simply, these are lossy compressed files, and the generated files are so small that users can create a music library without taking up too much space. And the quality? It is much lower than other formats, but the human ear doesn’t always manage to notice the difference significantly. MP3 is also a universal file. It can be found on smartphones, computers, smart TVs, tablets and many other electronic devices.

WMA

WMA stands for Windows Media Audio. It was first published in 1999 and has gone through several developments since then, always keeping the same name. As you can easily guess, it is an audio format created by Microsoft. It was developed to replace MP3s. Unfortunately, there are very few platforms that support this, so the MP3 mastery has never been compromised.

OGG

OGG is not a real compression audio format. We can define it as a multi-purpose multimedia container. It can contain all types of audio formats, but is often used to contain Vorbis files. It is one of the best performing files to reduce size without losing quality.

FLAC

FLAC stands for Free Codec Lossless Audio. It is a lossless, compressed format that was created in 2001. A FLAC file can be compressed to 60% of its original size without minimal loss of sound quality. It is also an open source format. Because of this, it is compatible with most programs and devices. It is the best quality alternative to MP3.

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What is Hi-Res sound and how it differs from normal audio

In recent times, many manufacturers of audio products have begun to add Hi-Res products to their catalogs, an acronym that comes from the English «High-Resolution», and indicates that the device is ready to play the audio with it quality that has been recorded, which is synonymous with maximum fidelity. But what features does Hi-Res sound have and why is it different from normal audio?

What is the Hi-Res sound?

The sound that is recorded in the studios – whether music, cinema, dubbing or whatever – is raw audio, without compression, and the recording is done in an analog way, because as you know the sound is formed by waves . Logically, for this audio to be heard on our televisions, smartphones, consoles and others, it is necessary to convert it to digital, and for that to be possible we must first be able to measure the waves so that they can then be recreated in the device that is going To emit the sound.

To measure these waves, a series of periodic samples are taken, and this is what is called the sampling rate. This sampling rate cannot be infinitely, logically, but the higher, the greater the fidelity of the audio we are converting to digital, and that is why we set some scales or minimums for each quality.

Thus, for example, the audio sampling frequency of a normal music CD is 44.1 Khz, which means 44,100 samples are taken from the waves per second. For Hi-Res sound, the standard is set at 96 Khz, or 96,000 wave samples per second, so you will be collecting many more nuances of the original sound, being much more faithful to it.

Hi-Res sampling rate comparison

As for the sound we reproduce in our equipment, there is another factor to consider: compression.

The normal sound, when recorded, is done in a pure format and without compressing anything. But this type of sound has the disadvantage that the size of the files is very large, so it becomes complicated to store them in multimedia playback devices. This is especially true if we think that most users use our mobile or tablet to play audio files.

To reduce the size of these files, sound file compressors were created, such as the MP3 format, which try to give a more or less authentic approximation to the original sound source, but with a considerably smaller file size. For example, if an MP3 file with a compression of 256 kbps has a size of about 3 megabytes, that same file, without compressing, can have more than 30 MB.

What does Hi-Res sound bring to normal audio?

When the sound is compressed, or as we have seen when it is converted from analog to digital, many audio frequencies are lost, among which are many subtle details of the sound, which give it much more body. As we explained before, Hi-Res sound tries to get closer to the original audio, setting its quality standard with a sampling frequency and bit depth much higher than normal audio.

Currently, the Hi-Res sound formats that exist are: WAV, FLAC, ALAC, DSD and MQA. Of all of them, probably the best known for PC are the WAV format and the FLAC. The WAV format is usually used to record the original audios, but their files take up a lot of space because it is still uncompressed audio. The FLAC format is a type of compression that also falls within the Hi-Res sound quality and sufficiently compresses the sound source so that the loss of quality is absolutely minimized.

What do we need to hear Hi-Res sound?

Since the audio we will have in hand has certain special characteristics in terms of frequencies and formats, we will need an audio player that is capable of dealing with these compression formats, since not all players are capable of doing so. However, virtually any modern PC sound card, including those integrated into the boards, as well as many smartphones on the market (not televisions), are already capable of handling Hi-Res sound. According to the Japanese Audio Society, who created the Hi-Res audio standard, the DAC (the analog-to-digital converter) must be able to process audio at 96 KHz and 24 bit.

What is the HI RES AUDIO

Everything you wanted to know about Hi-res and didn’t dare to ask.

With the Walkman’s return to our lives, we saw that a trend that had sounded since 2012 made another call to consumers: Hi-Res Audio. High-definition sound will be one of the striking themes that, like UHD on television, could change the demands that consumers want in their products.

However, many only know this type of audio by some yellow sticker attached to a device. But what is Hi-res Audio? Is it as good as they say? Here we tell you.

To clean your ears well

Since the arrival of digital formats, audio recordings have maintained a quality standard whose measurement point is an audio CD. The quality of this format is 16-bit / 44.1 kHz.

To understand these two measurements you have to understand how music is digitized from similar sources. The scanning programs convert the sound waves into bits, and for that they must take a limited number of audio samples and convert them into information. The second number (44.1 kHz) indicates the number of samples per second that are taken to make the conversion, and is called the sampling rate. The first number (16-bit) indicates how much information is captured from each sample. Simplifying a bit, the more bits an audio file has, the more information it receives, the more faithful it is to the original analogue and the better quality it has.

However, files of this quality are very heavy for a computer and other devices that served as audio players from past decades, so .MP3 was born as a format that compresses information and offers sufficient audio quality for most of consumers.

But with the advent of new technologies, and the revival of some old ones, consumers began to worry again about audio. Now we buy the soundbar because we want to hear our Spotify stream perfectly, or we look for the best home theater to feel like in a movie theater. And that we have created those needs are driving new formats (which have been around for a long time, but were recently popularized) But, to validate these new formats, a standard was needed, and thus the definition of Hi-res Audio was born:

“Audio without loss of quality that is capable of reproducing the total sound range of recordings that have been finalized from better quality music sources than a CD.”

As WhatHiFi reports, this definition was given by the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) together with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and the Recording Academy. This group was joined by companies such as Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. And by the way, they defined the formats of high resolution audio sources:

MQ-A: That comes from an analog source.

MQ-P: That comes from a PCM master source (48kHz / 20-bit or greater, such as 96/24 or 192/24)

MQ-D: That comes from a DSD / DSF master source, which are formats used in studio audio editing.

MQ-C: That comes from a CD.

And under a more popular definition, high-resolution audio is the one that can make you feel your hair bristling when the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ solo sounds, or the solo La rebellion ’piano solo by Joe Arroyo. A feeling that is not achieved when the format is not able to reproduce the entire sound spectrum that moves our guts.

So if you want to have songs of good quality, the first thing that should be fixed is that the store that sells them offers Hi-Res formats (the Sony music store, HD Tracks, PonoMusic, Gimell, etc …), and usually what they will download will be a file type .FLAC, .DSD, .AIFF, .WAV or .ALAC. In terms of image, they would be like the RAW of the audio. These types of files take up much (much) more space than a .MP3, so be prepared in case the flies.

Great sound requires great machinery

In order not to lose money or effort, it is necessary to have a good team that is capable of reproducing high quality audio. At home we must have a sound system with high quality speakers. Some cell phones such as the LG G3, the Sony Xperia Z3 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 have the power to play Hi-Res audio without buying headphone amplifiers. Other cell phones such as the iPhone 6 need an amplifier to give the headphones enough power to reproduce the high resolution audio. And, precisely, to be able to hear these files it is necessary that the player and the speakers that emit the sound are of high quality and can reproduce the entire spectrum.