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What are lossy and lossless audio formats, and what are common audio formats? Part 2

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What are lossy and lossless audio formats, and what are common audio formats? Part 2

Audio Formats:

2. WAVE is a sound file format developed by Microsoft, it is used to save the audio information resources of the WINDOWS platform, and is compatible with the WINDOWS platform and its applications.

3. AIFF format (Audio Interchange File Format) and AU format, AIFF is the English abbreviation for Audio Interchange File Format. It is an audio file format developed by APPLE and supported by the MACINTOSH platform and its applications. Many compression techniques are supported.

4.MPEG is the English abbreviation for Motion Picture Experts Group Currently, MP3 is the most common music format on the Internet. Although it is lossy compression, its biggest advantage is a higher compression ratio in exchange for very little sound distortion.

5. MP3 MPEG audio file compression is lossy compression. MPEG3 audio encoding has a high compression ratio of 10:1~12:1, while basically keeping the low audio part undistorted, but at the expense of the high 12KHz to 16KHz. in the sound file. The quality of the audio part is changed by the size of the file. Music files of the same length are stored in *.mp3 format, usually only 1/10 of *.wav file, so the sound quality is lower than CD or WAV format.

6. MPEG-4 Adopts object-based compression coding technology. Before encoding, the video stream is first analyzed, and each video object is segmented from the original image, and then the shape information, motion information, texture information is encoded separately, and temporal redundancy between consecutive frames is eliminated thanks to better motion prediction and compensation than MPEG-2. Its core is content-based scalability, which can assign priorities to each object in the image, express the most important objects with high spatial and temporal resolution, and express the less important objects (such as surveillance systems, background) are rendered. with a lower resolution. or even not displayed. Therefore, it has the ability to adaptively allocate resources and can perform low-speed, high-quality video transmission and image communications. It occupies less resources, has great flexibility, good network performance, and has a wider range of applications.

7. The MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) format is used by people who often play music, MIDI allows digital synthesizers and other devices to exchange data.

8. WMA (Windows Media Audio) format is a heavyweight player from Microsoft. The background is harsh, the sound quality is stronger than MP3 format, and it is much better than RA format. It is the same as the VQF format. developed by the Japanese company YAMAHA. However, the method to maintain sound quality can achieve higher compression ratio than MP3. The compression ratio of WMA can generally reach around 1:18. Another advantage of WMA is that content providers can use DRM (Digital Rights Management) like Windows Media. Rights Manager 7 adds copy protection.

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What are lossy and lossless audio formats, and what are common audio formats?

We often hear some terms like MP3, lossless, CD sound quality, and even come into contact with them. So what are lossy and lossless audio formats? What are their differences? Apart from the ones I heard above, what other common audio formats exist? Next, I will share with you the relevant knowledge of audio formats and answer your questions.

First, let’s briefly popularize the audio format:

The audio format is the music format. Audio format refers to the process of digital and analog conversion of audio files for playback or processing on a computer. At present, music file playback formats are divided into two types: lossy compression and lossless compression. When using different music file formats, there is a big difference in sound quality performance.

Difference Between Lossy and Lossless Compression:

Lossy compression is to reduce the audio sample rate and bit rate, and the output audio file will be smaller than the original file. Lossless compression, on the premise of saving 100% of all the data in the original file, can compress the audio file to a smaller size, and after restoring the compressed audio file, it can achieve the same size and code. than the source file. Speed.

Here are the common audio formats:

1. CD The standard CD format is the sampling frequency of 44.1K, the rate is 1411K/second, and the quantization number is 16 bits. Since the CD track can be said to be approximately lossless, its sound is basically faithful to the original sound.

Lossy vs Lossless, Audio Quality

Much is said and has been said about the difference between the formats that generate a loss of information (lossy) versus those that do not generate any loss (lossless).

What is Lossy?

To compress a file, so that it occupies less space on the disk, we must necessarily use two techniques, the first is pure compression, which does not lose quality and which we will explain later PLUS compression by discarding information.

It is omitting information that we know, after studies, that the human ear will hardly perceive. At least the average human ear.
Younger people listen to more frequencies than from the age of 30, when we listen to fewer frequencies.

But not only does age count, but other phenomena also enter, for example what is called masking and which could be summarized by saying that if two frequencies occur with similar frequencies, and one occurs an instant before the other, in general the second that masked… that is, it is not audible to the human ear, so we could discard it and save space.

There are also all the frequencies that the human ear does not perceive, there we have more information that we can discard without damaging the quality or at least maintaining a very similar quality of perception.

LossLess

There are other formats that do not lose quality because they only use mathematical methods to save space. Imagine the following line:

1111111000001110000000

This consumes a space, but this information could be summarized, for example as follows:

1(7)0(5)1(3)0(7)

This second way of storing information takes up much less space WITHOUT discarding anything. It simply explains that from the number 1 there are 7, followed by 5 zero numbers, then 3 from the number 1 and finally 7 zeros.

It’s the same, we just tried to save space by finding a compressed way to write it, but we didn’t rule anything out.

This is exactly how the zip and lossless music methods work.

Is there a difference in the human ear when listening to one and the other?
We will answer that in another article.

Lossy Audio File Types: How It Is Different From Lossless

Lossy Audio File Types: How It Is Different From Lossless

Lossy Compression vs Lossless Compression

Lossy is a word used in digital audio to describe the type of compression used to store audio data. The algorithm used in the lossy audio format compresses the audio data in such a way that it discards certain information. This loss of signal means that the encoded sound is not identical to the original.

lossy vs lossless

Lossy audio produces lower quality audio and has a smaller file size.

Lossy compression is also called irreversible compression because data that has been deleted is impossible to recover.

What is the difference between Lossy and Lossless?
When you create MP3 files by ripping one of your music CDs, some details of the original recording are lost, making it a lossy format. This type of compression isn’t just limited to audio; for example, JPEG image files are also lossy compressed.

Sheets of colored paper compressed into a ball

This method is the opposite of lossless audio compression used for formats like FLAC, ALAC, and others. In this case, the audio is compressed in such a way that the data is not deleted. The sound is identical to the original source.

Lossy archives take priority when it comes to compatibility. While lossless files are only supported by some devices and apps, a lossy audio format like MP3 will work on almost any device.

How Lossy Audio Compression Works
Lossy compression makes certain assumptions about frequencies that the human ear is unlikely to detect.

When a song is converted to a lossy audio format such as AAC, the algorithm analyzes all frequencies and then discards the frequencies that the ear should not be able to detect. These low frequencies are filtered or converted into mono signals that take up less disk space.

Another technique eliminates very quiet sounds that the listener is unlikely to notice, especially in the loudest part of the song. This approach reduces the size of the audio file while maintaining the highest possible audio quality.

What happens to the audio when it is compressed?
Lossy compression introduces artifacts. These artifacts are unwanted sounds that are not in the original recording but are a by-product of compression. This noise degrades sound quality and is noticeable when music files are converted using low bit rates.

Various types of artifacts affect the quality of the recording. Distortion is one of the most common artifacts. For example, distortion makes the drums feel weak, without any real beat. Song voices can also be affected, resulting in harsh vocals and lack of detail.

In many cases, casual listeners can’t tell the difference between lossy and lossless encoding, although some audiophiles using very expensive equipment claim to hear the difference. The difference in quality is only noticeable when very low data rates or aggressive compression algorithms come into play.

Why compress audio files?
Most digital audio formats use some form of compression to efficiently store sound. Without compression, the file sizes would be very large.

For example, a typical 3-minute song stored as an MP3 file is between 4MB and 5MB. Using the WAV format to store the same song, but without compression, results in a file size of approximately 30MB, at least six times that size. Fewer songs fit on your smartphone or hard drive when you choose uncompressed audio formats

Guide to fully understand lossless formats

They end with a period followed by three or four letters. This is what happens with absolutely all the files on a computer or smartphone. Those last letters represent the format in which this file is. Today we are going to focus on one type of format, the lossless format.

What is a lossless format?

Any element in a computer has to have some type of format, or so to speak, some type of structure that is known by that computer so that it can work with the file. In a parallelism with the world of physical objects, the format would be something like the material with which said object is constructed.

Just as there are different materials with different properties, there are also different formats with different characteristics. Most of the files we use today have a compressed format, so they take up less space on our computer and are easier to send via the Internet, or to upload to any social network. However, these formats are not the highest quality, since this position would be occupied by formats without loss. These formats retain the original quality of the file, and offer the best results.

If we talk about images, the lossless formats are RAW, BMP and PNG, among others. Meanwhile, the compressed formats are JPG and GIF. However, there are certain differences with some of them. RAW, for example, stores all the light data captured by the camera’s sensor. It is a perfect format for photographers. But it would not even be for photographers who want to share a certain photograph on a social network. A RAW photo can easily take up to 25 MB, depending on the resolution of the camera. A high-quality JPG photo would be a photograph that would take two or three megabytes, although it would have less quality.

If we talk about audio, there are three main lossless formats: WAV, FLAC and ALAC. The latter is the one used by Apple in iTunes. They are formats that do not lose anything of quality with respect to the original audio. Yes we would be losing quality with the MP3 and the OGG.

And if we talk about video, there are few lossless formats that we can talk about. In fact, there is a problem, and that is that storing videos without loss would be an impossible task for anyone without a storage server nearby. That is why we usually opt for MKV, WMV, and H.264 formats. Of course, the latter is much better, since the compression process it carries is much more intelligent.

Compression, how does it work?

Now, what is this about compressed formats? As its name suggests, we are talking about formats that reduce files, and we can rely on it to fully understand how these formats work. Surely we have all been in the situation of having to pack a suitcase with just enough space, finish choosing all the clothes that we are going to take on a trip, and finally having to decide what we can do without in order to close the suitcase, because we had too many clothes. Well, that is the compression of each of the formats. They remove elements from that file, and thus make it weigh or occupy less.

Why are there different formats? Returning to the case of the suitcase, each person will make different decisions regarding those things that they can do without for their trip. It will vary from person to person. The same goes for formats. The developers of these reduce the space occupied by a file, but each of the formats removes data in a different way, so that a file compressed to JPG, can be different from one GIF, even if both are compressed. Each of them has followed a different procedure to delete the data, and that the song, image, or video, continues to play practically the same as the original version.

When to convert from compression to lossless?

The question at the top of this paragraph is especially important to anyone who has ever converted a file from a compressed format to a lossless format. And it is that, in reality, it is cheating, because you should never convert a file from a compressed format to a lossless file. Actually, nothing happens if we do, but we will not improve the quality of that file, even if it will now be available in a format in which the files are not compressed.

Of course, it is also not a good idea to convert a file in a compressed format to a different compressed format. Keep in mind that each compression process is different depending on the chosen format. In other words, each format eliminates the data it considers appropriate to maintain the quality of the image. If we have a file in a compressed format, this will mean that it no longer preserves all the original data. If we now convert it to a different compressed format, the compression process will remove new data from the file, and chances are we have a much more corrupted file.

Files without compression, lossless and lossy formats

Files without compression, with compression but without loss and with compression and with loss … what does that mean?

There is currently a huge confusion in most people about audio formats and that is why we are going to give an explanation that is as simple and clear as possible so that most of the people who read can understand enough to be able to make decisions about it. .

We will not try to get into technicalities or knowledge What are for specialists or connoisseurs or programmers, such as those who developed the mp4gain, but rather we will talk about general concepts at the beginner level but that can allow a correct understanding of the matter.

So the first thing we must understand is that the quality of an audio file depends on the amount of details it contains and for it to contain many details, it takes up a lot of space on the hard disk.

We could say that there are three groups of audio file formats:

– audio formats that do not have compression such as WAV, AIFF, etc.

– formats that compress audio but do not have a loss of information. FLAC, MPEG-4 SSL, WAV PACK, etc.

– There are also the formats that the audio compresses but that do have a loss of information, for example MP3, Ogg, HERE, ETCÉTERA

Now let’s clarify what it means that some formats do have compression but do not have loss of information while others also have compression but do have loss of information.

The formats that are compressed but have no loss of information what they do is something very similar to zip the file. In other words, they simply compress.

The original information but they do not discard anything, therefore when unzipping the file the original file is obtained again that had all the details and therefore is of very high quality.

On the other hand there are files such as MP3 that are compressed but also to achieve greater compression what they do is that they get rid of some part of the information. For example, those frequencies that are not audible to the human ear also get rid of that information that is redundant and they also use the method called masking which part of the idea that a sound that is very loud and is very forward It will be able to mask other sounds and the human brain will not perceive those other sounds. Therefore, according to this theory, they can get rid of these sounds that have been masked and the file will sound more or less the same to the human ear.

This concept of sound masking was one of the great milestones that made MP3 become so popular because it could compress files a lot, at a time when disk space was not superfluous, and yet they sounded pretty good to that ear. era and those people.

Also the programs that made the normalization of the audio volume, achieved results that at that time sounded good, but at this time the listening ear as a has become much more demanding and sophisticated. And so we need much more modern normalizers with much more algorithms. more powerful like mp4gain.

Guide to fully understand lossless formats

They end with a period followed by three or four letters. It is what happens with absolutely all the files of a computer or a smartphone. These last letters represent the format in which said file is. Today we are going to focus on one type of format, the lossless format.

What is a lossless format?

Any element in a computer has to have some kind of format, or so to speak, some kind of structure that is known by that computer so that it can work with the file. In a parallel with the world of physical objects, the format would be something like the material with which the object is constructed.

Just as there are different materials with different properties, there are also different formats with different characteristics. Most of the files we use today have a compressed format, so they take up less space on our computer and are easier to send via the Internet, or upload to a social network. However, these formats are not the highest quality, since this position would be occupied by lossless formats. These formats retain the original quality of the file, and are the ones that offer the best results.

If we talk about images, the lossless formats are RAW, BMP and PNG, among others. Meanwhile, the compressed formats are JPG and GIF. However, there are certain differences with some of them. RAW, for example, stores all the light data captured by the camera’s sensor. It is a perfect format for photographers. But it would not even be for photographers who want to share a particular photograph on a social network. A RAW photo can easily occupy 25 MB, depending on the resolution of the camera. A high quality JPG photo would be a photograph that would occupy two or three megabytes, although it would have less quality.

If we talk about audio, there are three main formats without loss: WAV, FLAC and ALAC. The latter is the one used by Apple in iTunes. They are formats that do not lose any quality with respect to the original audio. Yes we would be losing quality with MP3 and OGG.

And if we talk about video, there are few lossless formats that we can talk about. In fact, there is a problem, and storing videos without loss would be an impossible task for anyone who did not have a storage server nearby. That is why we usually opt for the MKV, WMV, and H.264 formats. Of course, the latter is much better, because the compression process is much more intelligent.

Compression, how does it work?

Now, what is this about compressed formats? As the name implies, we are talking about formats that reduce files, and we can rely on it to perfectly understand how these formats work. Surely we have all seen ourselves in the situation of having to pack a suitcase with just the right space, finish choosing all the clothes we are going to take on a trip, and finally have to decide what we can do without being able to close the suitcase, because we had too many clothes. For that is the compression of each of the formats. They remove items from that file, and thus make them weigh or occupy less.

Why are there different formats? Returning to the case of the suitcase, each person will make different decisions regarding those things that he can do without for his trip. It will vary from one person to another. The same goes for formats. The developers of these reduce the space occupied by a file, but each of the formats deletes data in a different way, so that a file compressed to JPG, can be different from one GIF, even if the two are compressed. Each of them has followed a different procedure to delete the data, and that the song, image, or video, continue to play almost the same as the original version.

When to convert from compression to lossless?

The question that heads this paragraph is especially important for all those who at some point have converted a file from a compressed format to a lossless format. And, in fact, it goes with a trap, because you should never convert a file from a compressed format to a file without loss. In reality, nothing happens if we do, but we will not improve the quality of that file, although it will now be available in a format in which the files are not compressed.

Of course, it is also not a good idea to convert a file into a compressed format, to a different compressed format. Let’s keep in mind that each compression process is different depending on the format chosen. That is, each format eliminates the data it deems appropriate to maintain image quality. If we have a file in a compressed format, that will mean that it no longer retains all data.