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Audio formats.

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Audio formats.

Audio Formats

There are many types of voice file formats, as well as image file formats.

Audio Files

Since the digital audio files are easy to copy, the illegal copy and distribution of music files has become a problem these days.

As explained in what analog data is, the mechanism of digital audio files is that analog signals become digital data and are saved.

Explaining in detail the conversion method, to convert an analogue to digital waveform, it is necessary to perform a job called “sampling” that measures (record) the sound waveform at regular intervals, and is the sampling cycle. The sampling frequency is called (sampling frequency).

The sampling frequency represents the number of samples per second and is in Hz. In other words, it is a unit that expresses how many times the sound is measured and recorded per second, and the greater the value, the more faithful the original and greater sound becomes the quality of the sound. However, the amount of data will increase proportionally.

The sampling frequency of a typical music CD is 44.1 k Hz. However, even if the sampling frequency is increased, there are sounds and frequency bands that can not really be recorded, so some classical music enthusiasts love expensive analogue equipment.

In addition, it is not only the sampling frequency, which affects the quality of the sound, but also the “sampling bit” that indicates the strength (volume) of the sound (16 bits are 65,535, 24 bits are 16,777,215). (Express) and “Number of channels” (number of sound lines recorded as stereo, monaural and 5.1 channels) also have an effect. The higher the value, the greater the sound quality.

Another factor that greatly affects sound quality is the bit rate. The bit rate represents the amount of data to be recorded per second and the unit is “BPS”.

In other words, the higher the bit rate, the more information can be stored, which results in a higher sound quality. As will be described in detail below, in the MP3 file format, 128 K BPS is the minimum bit rate that can be heard.

However, there is “constant bit rate” and “variable bit rate” in the bit rate. The constant bit rate is the same bit rate that is fixed from the beginning to the end of the voice, and the variable bit rate increases or decreases the bit rate according to the amount of voice information.

In other words, the bit rate is high for clauses with multiple voices and the bit rate is low for simple low voice clauses. You can reduce the total size of the file by choosing a variable bit rate.

This is the information contained in the digitized data of analog audio signals.

However, digitized data can not be used as. Just converting this data into an arbitrary file format and saving them, it will be possible to use them with multimedia devices and application software that admit that format.

The storage format of said data

file format

Is named. A file format is a file format with an extension.

Then, to save the data in a file format, it is necessary to transform (encode: encoding) the data according to that format. (For coding, see What is a character code?)

A dedicated program is used to codify the data, but said coding program is

Codec (codec)
Is named. In other words, the gross data obtained by converting analog signals into digital data are processed by a codec to market them as a file format.

Therefore, there are many types of codecs and coding methods for each type of codec.

Most current codecs are programs that compress and encode data when creating a file and decompress (decompress) data by playing a file. In general terms, codecs are used to compress and decompress data. It refers to a compression method program of this type.

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Audio formats: rating and benefits

Audio formats: rating and benefits

As actual field studies have shown, a good idea to rank the top ten audio formats turned out to be an impossible task at first.

Competition conditions too different for unequal participants. In addition, some corruption schemes or lobbyists of transnational companies in the field of audio recording interfere in our good cause to help people choose the best sound product.

The world’s most popular MP3 format reached the leaders of popular love solely due to multi-million dollar promotional investments. And if you take the sound quality, then regular. And even in terms of compression and disk space savings, it’s not the highest compression either.

Therefore, a compromise decision was made: divide the test subjects into three groups and compare and identify the leaders by groups.

Three types of audio formats
No compression.
Lossless compression.
Lossy compression.
Uncompressed audio recording formats show their best performance only on high-quality professional audio equipment.

If you have an inexpensive tablet or smartphone in your hands, then wonderful music will sound on your device, but you will not hear it simply because the hardware and software resource and the speakers or headphones cannot reproduce such high sound quality.

On the other hand, if you start MP3 sound recording through professional stereos and amplifiers, you will hear such noise and rattle from the speakers that, again, this type of use is completely meaningless.

Audio classification by type of sound reproduction equipment
For professional equipment, uncompressed audio formats.
For semi-professional teams, compressed audio formats. But without loss.
For inexpensive equipment: lossy and compressed audio formats.
In the first case, the hardware is so expensive that it is ridiculous to worry about saving money on media.

In the second case, the owner of an Apple device for a thousand dollars will obviously be able to call himself and spend a couple of hundred dollars on a bulky memory.

In the third case, since it has hardly been possible to raise money for a cheap smartphone, saving on the size of the stored music is very important. Well, no one is going to listen to a symphony orchestra in Hi-Fi on the phone anyway. Unless you can download a ringtone from the classics for fun to make it look like a fresh bell pepper to the eyes of tomatoes.

With this concludes the overture, we begin to present the subject.

Audio formats for high quality sound
This includes uncompressed formats.

PCM – Pulse Code Modulation. The original analog audio is sampled as is, without any modification.
PCM is the most common audio recording format used on CDs and DVDs. Dolby multi-channel, surround, subject to high-quality speakers, sounding almost one-on-one with a live performance.

If you like to sit in front of a home theater and immerse yourself in empathy for the main and supporting characters in the movie, this is it.

Wav
A fairly old format, developed as early as 1991. Well, the old masters always thought of high quality.

Many people consider WAV to be an uncompressed format. But it is actually a container and it can also contain compressed files.

In most cases, WAV contains uncompressed PCM audio. Therefore, the quality is high. But even for one minute of recording, approximately 32MB of memory is wasted.

Good enough compatibility with Windows and Mac.

AIFF
WAV analog from Apple developers. This is also a container and also usually contains sound in PCM format. Good compatibility with Windows.

Lossy compressed audio formats
Truly popular formats for everyone.

MP3
In accordance with the MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 standard, it appeared in 1993 and instantly won universal love precisely because of its economy in memory consumption.

A CD can store the complete discography of your favorite band.
Throw some records in the glove compartment and you can enjoy music from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.
During this time, you can listen to all the books by all the writers worth listening to.
The MP3 format is such a solid eunuch, from which they cut the most reluctant, but began to show the ability to store and save. So MP3 is a very inexpensive format.

The main advantage is that he leans on everything that he just plays and sings.

AAC
An advanced form of audio encoding. The younger but advanced brother of MP3. It has slightly improved sound characteristics and a higher compression ratio.

Applies to Android, iOS, iTunes, YouTube, Nintendo, and the latest versions of PlayStation.

Description of the main audio formats

Description of the main audio formats

In the world of music there are a large number of music formats, their modifications and versions, created by the giants of the music industry and small companies that have received public recognition in the electronic world.

Various physical methods have been developed to store audio data for these purposes, such as vinyl records, magnetic tape, CD, DAT, MD (minidisc), DVD, or converting music scores to music (MIDI), in the same way that they have many different computing methods emerged. audio data storage – digital: OGG, Mp3, Flac, Wav formats.

It is impossible to consider and discuss all audio formats, codecs, their advantages and disadvantages, so in my article I will try to tell you about the most popular audio file extensions that you find.

Why can’t we use any universal audio file encoding format? Because implementing multiple functions requires a different format. For example: to play CDs in a CD-ROM drive, to record music or sound effects in video games, to record a movie track or video clip, to play on mobile phones or to transfer files over the Internet, in addition, there are various operating systems that are the most widely used in the world … These include: Amiga, Macintosh, NEXT, and Windows PC.

Also, the work of a dj, sound engineer, cj, video engineer, or a simple music lover is quite different in nature. This may require that your audio data be saved in your own way. For example, the audio of a CD must be saved using 16 bits and a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz. However, to download sound over the Internet, we’d better use a different bit depth and sample rate, as each minute of 16-bit, 44-kilohertz audio takes up about 10MB, i.e. an average track of 5 minutes will be 50 meters, too much data for the average user. This article provides an overview of the most popular music formats.

AA (Audible Audio Book File) is a proprietary format developed by Audible. It is used to record audiobooks sold through the Audible and iTunes services. It is possible to reduce or accelerate the speed of listening to files: digital tone, the ability to leave bookmarks when listening to audio books, file protection, when delivering sound recordings over the Internet.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is an audio file format with less quality loss when encoding than MP3 in the same sizes. Lossless music encoding of original quality using the ALAC profile. AAC is a family of MPEG4 audio coding algorithms. Unlike the hybrid mp3 filter bank, AAC uses MDST (Modified Cosine Transform) technology, which means that the listener gets better sound quality than MP3 encoding with the same or lower bit rate. Possible AAC file extensions: [.m4a], [.m4b], [.m4p].

Additionally, AAC is a wideband audio coding algorithm that uses two basic coding principles to dramatically reduce the amount of data required to transmit high-quality digital audio. This format is one of the highest quality, uses lossy compression, compatible with most modern equipment, including notebooks.

For 2009, it is much less common than MP3 and other workarounds. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) was originally created as a successor to MP3 with improved encoding quality. The AAC format, officially known as ISO / IEC 13818-7, was released in 1997 as the new seventh part of the MPEG-2 family. There is also the AAC format known as MPEG-4 Part 3.

Benefits of AAC over MP3:

– up to 48 audio channels;

– high coding efficiency with constant and variable bit rate;

– sampling frequencies from 8 Hz to 96 kHz (MP3: 8 Hz – 48 kHz);

– More flexible set stereo mode.

ADX is a proprietary ADICM-based lossy compression and storage format developed by CRI Middleware specifically for use in video games. The most characteristic feature is the ability to repeat the sound recording, which makes using the format convenient to use as background music in various games that support this media container. It is compatible with many SEGA Dreamcast games, some PlayStation 2 games and GameCube.

Unlike MP3, it does not use the psychoacoustic model of reducing the volume of sound data (reducing its complexity). Instead, the ADPCM model uses a prediction function relative error data record to store samples.