Principle of mp3 and file format analysis. Part4

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis. Part4

MP3

The three bytes starting at 1397H are 54 41 47, which store the “TAG” character, indicating that this file has ID3 V1.0 information.

MP3

The 30 bytes starting at 139AH store the name of the song, the first 4 bytes that are not 00 are 54 45 53 54, which means “TEST”;
the 4 bytes starting at 13F4H are 04 19 14 03 and the year of storage is “04/25/2003” ”;
the last byte is 4E, which represents the music category, and the code name is 78, that is, “Rock&Roll”; the
other bytes are all 00, and no information is stored.

4 Conclusions
As an important multimedia data type, people are always looking for more efficient compression methods and new sound file formats. In the MP3 file, the MDCT transform is used, which is a quasi-optimal transform with a simple structure and easy programming, which avoids the problem that the optimal transform (KL) is difficult to solve for the eigenvalues ​​and eigenvectors of the covariance. matrix.

Through the analysis of the MP3 file format, it is not difficult to find its shortcomings. Each frame of an MP3 file has the same 4-byte frame header, which requires some space overhead for an MP3 file with a large number of frames. ID3 stores the music description information. The proprietary, copyright, and other information in the frame header is also description information. The music description information is a bit messy.

In any case, the development of MP3 is unstoppable. MP3 has become a recognized sound data format. MP3 is becoming a hot spot in the field of multimedia information processing along with JPEG images and PDF documents.

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis. Part 3

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis. Part 3

Mp3tag

The ID3 standard MP3 frame header does not consider storing complex information such as song title, author, album name, year, etc., except some simple music description information such as privacy, copyright and original, which are very necessary in MP3 applications.

mp3 tag

 

 

In 1996, in the “Studio 3” project, FricKemp proposed to add description information for storing songs at the end of the MP3 file and formed the ID3 standard. Until now, ID3 V1.0, V1.1, V2 .0, V2, .3 and V2.4 standards have been formulated. The higher the version, the richer and more detailed the relevant information is recorded.
The ID3 V1.0 standard is not complete and the information stored is too small to store lyrics, album covers, images, etc. V2.0 is a fairly complete standard, but it brings difficulties in writing software, although there are many people in favor of this format, very few are actually implemented in software. The vast majority of MP3s still use the ID3 V1.0 standard. This standard uses the last 128 bytes at the end of the MP3 file to store ID3 information. See Table 3 for instructions on using these 128 bytes.
Table 3 Final ID3 V1.0 File Description
length in
byte (byte) Description
1-3 3 Stores the “TAG” character, which indicates the ID3 V1.0 standard, followed by the song information.
4-33 30 Song name
34-63 30 Author
64-93 30 Album name
94-97 4 Year
98-127 30 Notes
128 1 MP3 music category, a total of 147 types.

3.3 File example
Open a file called test.mp3 in VC++ with the following content:
000000 FF FB 52 8C 00 00 01 49 09 C5 05 24 60 00 2A C1
000010 19 40 A6 00 00 05 96 41 34 18 20 80 08 26 48 29
000020 83 04 00 01 61 41 40 50 04 00 C1 2 41 50 64

0000d0 Fe FF FB 52 80 01 EE 90 65 6E 02 30
0000E0 32 0C CD CD CD CD 46 16 41 89 B8 408 89 300 408
0000F0 33 B7 00 00 01 02 FF FF FF F4 E1 2F FF FF FF FF
……
0001A0 DF FF FF FF FB 52 8C 12 00 E 01 FE 90 58 6E 09 A0 02
000150 8513 B0 AC 45 F6 19 61 26 26
0001C0 05 AC B4 20 28 94 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF

001390 7F FF FF FF FD 4E 00 54 41 47 54 45 53 54 00 00
0013A0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
001400
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
001410 00 00 00 00 00 00 4E
File length is 1416H (5.142K), frame header is: FF FB 52 8C, converted to binary:
11111111 11111011
01010010
10001100T

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis. Part 2

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis. Part 2

mp3

MP3 uses perceptual audio coding (Perceptual Audio Coding) this distortion algorithm.

mp3

The frequency range of sound perceived by the human ear is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. MP3 cuts out a lot of redundant signals and irrelevant signals. The encoder transforms the original sound into the frequency domain through a mixed filter bank and uses a psychoacoustic model. to estimate that it may be only The perceived noise level is quantized and converted to Huffman coding to form an MP3 bit stream. The decoder is much simpler, its task is to extract the sound signal from the encoded spectral line components through inverse quantization and inverse transformation. The MP3 encoding and decoding process is shown in Figure 1.
2.4 Modified Discrete Cosine Transform The cosine transform
Modified Discrete CT (MDCT) refers to converting a time-domain data set to frequency-domain data in order to know the changes in the time domain. MDCT is an enhancement of the DCT algorithm. The first fast algorithm is fast Fourier transform (FFT), but FFT has complex operations, MDCT are real operations, easy to program.
When compressing audio data, first divide the original sound data into fixed blocks, and then perform direct MDCT (direct MDCT) to convert the value of each block into MDCT 512 coefficients. The 512 coefficients are restored to the original sound data, and The original before and after sound data is inconsistent because redundant and irrelevant data is removed during the compression process. The FMDCT transformation formula is:
k=0, 1,
.
n0=(N/2+1)/2, X(n) is the time domain value, X(k) is the frequency domain value. If N takes 1024 points, it becomes 512 frequency domain values.
The IMDCT transformation formula is:

n=0, 1, …, N-1
MDCT itself does not compress data, it simply maps the signal to another domain, and quantization compresses the data. When bit allocation is done on the quantized transformed samples, the entire quantized block must be considered the smallest, which is called lossy compression.
3 File Format Analysis
MP3 MP3 file data is made up of multiple frames, and the frame is the smallest unit of the MP3 file. Each frame, in turn, consists of a frame header, additional information, and sound data. The playback time of each frame is 0.026 seconds and its duration varies with the bit rate. Some MP3 files have extra bytes at the end that contain description information for non-audio data.

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis.

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis.

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis

Principle of mp3 and file format analysis

1. Introduction
With the rapid development of file compression technology, MP3 has become the most popular music format today. High-quality music spreads rapidly around the world with the arrangement of 0 and 1, which shakes people’s hearts. What is MP3? The full name of MP3 is MPEG Audio Layer 3, which is an efficient computer audio coding scheme. It converts audio files into smaller files with an .MP3 extension with a higher compression ratio, basically maintaining the sound quality of the original file. MP3 is part of the ISO/MPEG standard, which describes audio compression using a high-performance perceptual coding scheme. This standard has been continuously updated to meet the pursuit of “high quality and low quality”, and has now formed MPEG Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3 three audio encoding and decoding schemes. MPEG Layer 3 compression ratio can reach 1:10 to 1:12, 1M of MP3 file can be played for 1 minute and 1 minute of CD-quality WAV file (44100Hz, 16bit, dual channel, 60 seconds) occupies 10M space, so Calculated, the playing time of a 650M MP3 disc should be more than 10 hours, and the playing time of a CD of the same capacity is about 70 minutes. The advantage of MP3 is that the CD is incomparable.
2 Analysis of the principle of MP3
2.1 audio standard
MPEG MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) is a group of dynamic picture experts under ISO, the MPEG standard which makes it widely used in various multimedia. The MPEG standards include audio and video standards, of which the audio standards have been established as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-2 AAC, and MPEG-4.
The MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards use the same family of audio codecs: Layer 1, 2, 3. A new feature of MPEG-2 is the use of low sample rate expansion to reduce the data stream, and another feature is multichannel expansion, which increases the number of main channels to 5. The MPEG-2 AAC (MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding) standard was released by Fraunhofer IIS and AT&T in 1997 to significantly reduce data traffic. The MDCT (Modified Discrete Cosine Transform) algorithm adopted by MPEG-2 AAC has a sampling frequency between 8KHz and 96KHz, the number of channels can be between 1-48.
The three layers of MPEG Audio Layer 1, 2, and 3 use the same filter bank, bitstream structure, and header information, and the sampling frequency is 32KHz, 44.1KHz, or 48KHz. Layer 1 is designed for DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) compressed digital tape, the data rate is 384kbps, Layer 2 has made a compromise between complexity and performance, and the data rate is reduced to 256kbps-192 kbps. Layer 3 is designed for low data traffic from the start, and the data traffic is 128Kbps-112Kbps. Layer 3 adds MDCT transformation to make its frequency resolution 18 times that of layer 2. Layer 3 also uses average information similar to MPEG video. Entropy Encoding reduces redundant information. The vast majority of MP3s use the MPEG-1 standard.
2.2 Purpose of audio compression
The MP3 format began in the mid-1980s, when the Fraunhofer Institute in Erlangen, Germany, dedicated itself to encoding high-quality, low-data-rate sound. Let’s look at an example: you want to sample a song you like that is about 4 minutes long, store it on a disk, sample it in CD-quality WAV format, at a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, that is, receive a value of 44100 per second, stereo, each sampled data is 16 bits (2 bytes), so the space this song occupies is:
44100 x 2 channels x 2 bytes x 60 seconds x 4 minutes = 40.4 MB
If you download this song from the Internet, assuming the transmission speed is 56 kbps, the download time is:
40.4x106x8/56x103x60=96 minutes
Even a 1M broadband network requires more than 5 minutes, it can be seen that audio compression is particularly important to reduce audio data storage space.
2.3 Encoding and decoding
MP3 MP3 audio compression consists of two parts: encoding and decoding. Encoding converts the data in a WAV file into a highly compressed bitstream, and decoding takes the bitstream and reconstructs it into a WAV file.

THE MOST COMMON FORMATS FOR MUSIC AND OTHER AUDIO FILES AND HOW THEY ARE RELATED TO EACH OTHER PART 2

THE MOST COMMON FORMATS FOR MUSIC AND OTHER AUDIO FILES AND HOW THEY ARE RELATED TO EACH OTHER PART 2

mUSIC fORMATS

AUDIO CONVERTER

Music Formats

With an audio converter the situation is even simpler. Programs of this type are specially designed to convert between audio formats quickly, without explicit user intervention. Unlike audio editors, converters, we can say, use batch mode, that is, they allow you to convert MP3 files in a single operation, for example, not a single copy, and make several pieces at once. Depending on the app’s function, there may be dozens or hundreds.

Audiobooks in MP3 format

Once again, the operation of such a package is simple. Just select the source material (usually it can be a completely different file type) and install the final format. Then press a special button to start the process, the output user gets all files of a certain type. Your save usually occurs in the folder set in the app’s default settings, but the save location can of course be changed by yourself. By the way, the same applies to basis functions, which will be used during the transformation. However, any program initially provides the user with a specific set of criteria to use with a specific type of audio file. They can also change.

The beauty of these apps is that they have a complete process that will automate as much as possible and do all the required processes without much time. However, if we use a music or audio editor, comparing them in terms of improving the same sound quality especially cannot be dispersed here.

MUSICAL ARRANGEMENT
This is another type of software, most of which have built-in editors for MP3, WAV, etc. In this sense, they work on a similar principle to audiorekatorami, but their abilities are slightly broader.

Convert to MP3 format

First of all, it deals with the fact that the entire composition can consist of fragments of different types (MP3, MIDI, WAV, OGG, VST-library or DX-tool, etc. D.). After recording all sound tracks, for example mixing and mastering with virtual synthesizers or prescription parties, the resulting files can be saved in the desired format. Mostly it is an MP3 or WAV, or the program’s project file. In some applications, there is also a recording function to disk. Do you want an audio CD? No problem! In addition to the audio editor, it may take a few minutes to perform the necessary operations and get the tracks on the output disc in CDA format.

If we talk about the benefits of this type of application, it is obvious that only a few formats of the same union, and then saving or exporting to some of the most common are its greatest advantages. Also, you need to pay attention to the fact that the very overlay effect or change of any track parameters happens in real time, that is, the result will not necessarily wait; can be heard immediately by turning some knobs, for example. , or another option. Of course, this is only a small part of what packages are capable of.

HOW SHOULD I USE IT?
Finally, we come to the question of choosing the software to use with the MP3 format, or any other sound to record to. As is clear, normal listening to music or audiobooks is enough and a humble player (software or “iron”), or more commonly a DVD player.

Converting files to other formats, so to speak, in a hurry, is the perfect audio converter. However, if the output needs to achieve crystal clear sound quality, or even convert one file type to another, it is indispensable without powerful dedicated software. Of course, this requires ordering more, and without any experience, time to get the same high-quality MP3 files as the first time and you can’t get. However, with at least some in-depth study from audio editors, let alone professional music studios, the results will exceed everyone’s expectations.

THE MOST COMMON FORMATS FOR MUSIC AND OTHER AUDIO FILES, AND HOW THEY ARE RELATED TO EACH OTHER

THE MOST COMMON FORMATS FOR MUSIC AND OTHER AUDIO FILES, AND HOW THEY ARE RELATED TO EACH OTHER

Music Formats

 

And for the direct competitors of the universal MP3 format, they can count on a lot today.

Music Formats

Due to continuing inconsistencies in home storage of the WAV format, it was eventually discontinued. But for professional studios, he says, the basics of the job. Especially when recording live vocals or instruments. Just convert the recorded material from WAV to MP3 at the final stage.

music format

However, music can be represented in some other popular formats nowadays. For example, many times (especially the Internet) they use these data types like OGG, AIFF, AMR, etc. But the real competitor of MP3 has become the newest and best audio FLAC etc. Of course, for MP3 you can convert all parameters to the maximum, but the playback quality of FLAC represents much higher. Also, it is a single file and the separation occurs directly on the track due to the player or startup software. In other words, listeners see each track individually, but can switch between playback tracks. For the MP3 format, this also seems possible to merge multiple tracks through it, thus creating a single file. But here it is in this version fast switching between tracks will not be possible (normal fast forward should be used, that’s all).

However, not everything is bad. The fact that music or audiobooks are all popular formats today allows them to be easily converted, even keeping the original parameters of the audio material. Based on this, and for sound processing and conversion and audio editors, almost all programs call converters. Any program of this type (MP3 editor or converter) detects the original and final type of audio files, is unambiguous and can produce direct and reverse transformations. Let’s explain this specific example.

WAVE THEORY AUDIO EDITOR FOR MP3 FILES
Many types of software are used in audio processing today. First, look at the narrow application of so-called audio editors. The most prominent representatives of these can be called giants Sony Audio Forge, Sintrillium Cool Editing Pro, which was later acquired by Adobe and renamed Audition, Acoustica Mixcraft, ACID Pro and many others.

mp3 editor

The principle on which they operate is that, for convenience, all MP3 audio programs have a typical waveform, as originally used for WAV files. This method determines the appearance and opportunity enough to edit any type of conventional audio material in WAV format. Other than that, the fact that you can do basic copy, cut, paste, etc. E., it’s just a matter of getting the frequency characteristics and bitrate changes, not to mention using a lot of extra effects that plug into VSTs via DirectX or a generic host bridge studio thing.

In its simplest form, the conversion can be done using the standard file menu, which contains the line “Save As…” (Save As…) or the export function present in MP3 format. Thus, all the process is reduced to just the final selection of the format (MP3 here as an example) and activation of the recording mode. In this case the conversion will be done automatically saving the current configuration parameters and the frequency characteristics. I don’t like the original version? ?Nothing is easier than changing the format to MP3, pre-specified with higher settings. However, one thing needs to be considered here: if the raw material is of such poor quality that special remediation or even professional tools will not work for audio it is necessary to use Repairs here, the intervention of various filters, etc. D. For the layman, it will cause great difficulties.

As is clear, there is absolutely no difference between the audiobooks we are dealing with: MP3, music or just recorded voice or noise. By the way, audiobooks are supposed to have a much lower sound quality by default. This is understandable, since the file has to take up minimal space and, in general, the perceived sound characteristics of speech are not that important. Finally, is this a professional recording of a particular set of albums?

However, if you use some standard operations, even without specific knowledge, it’s fine to achieve good results, especially since there are such built-in templates, based on any application for specific operations. Of course, it will be very difficult for the first time to achieve a perfect sound, but if you study the plan and understand how it works, it will work like clockwork, and as a result, it will take a lot of time.

Compressed audio formats

Compressed audio formats

Compressed Audio File Formats

Understanding compressed audio formats
The digital age dictates its own laws, according to which, in particular, audio and video information is more convenient to store and transmit in compressed form. Let’s briefly discuss the principle of sound compression.

Compressed Audio file formats

As you know, the music we listen to consists of a set of signals, each of which has its own characteristics, including loudness. The human auditory system is designed so that we do not distinguish or misdirect a weak (low) signal from the background of a strong (strong) signal. This principle forms the basis of modern means of compression (compression) of audio data.

If we imagine that a signal of a certain length is divided into many parts, and each part is processed in such a way that a weaker signal, which is difficult to distinguish from a strong one, falls under the knife and a stronger signal remains, then this will be a rough model of audio signal compression. … Consequently, the level of data compression will depend on how many parts (samples) the original file will be divided into and how many weak signals from each individual sample will be removed (what the bit rate will be: the number of bits in a sample of a specified duration).

The first versions of codecs for data compression acted quite crudely: they just cut off a weak signal and did not take into account the type of music, therefore, rather energetic music, without special nuances, in a compressed form does not it sounded worse than the original, whereas more complex classical and acoustic music simply lost all color and depth.

As a result of this, a transition to a more intelligent compression algorithm, with a variable bit rate, was made. Depending on the musical texture, that is, the ratio of weak and strong signals, the codec changes the amount of weak signals cut, so that we hear a more believable sound.

Obviously, with a higher sample rate (sampling) of 44.1-48.0 KHz and a higher bit rate (160-192 Kbps), we will get a sound more consistent with the original than with a sample rate 22 KHz and 64 Kbps bit rate. However, the size of the final compressed file is directly proportional to the selected sample rate and bit rate, and this is what people who distribute music in the form of compressed (compressed).

It should also be remembered that most algorithms cut the upper part of the audible range as well, starting at around 15 kHz.

There are currently several original compression algorithms, most of which are compatible with Linux.

Ogg Vorbis
Ogg Vorbis is a completely open audio format that allows you to store and transmit audio information with high sound quality (44.1-48.0 kHz sample rate, 16+ bits, polyphony (multi-channel audio)) and bit rates ranging from 16 to 512 kbps per channel. The number of channels processed can be as high as 255. This allows Vorbis to be on par with MPEG-4 (AAC and TwinVQ), WMA and PAC audio, and clearly superior to MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) audio. .

Ogg Vorbis is also a streaming format, allowing it to be used, for example, for Internet broadcasts, especially since this format is compatible with Icecast. The characteristics of the codec algorithm allow you to get the final file smaller than MP3 files of similar quality.

For the reproduction the console program ogg123 is used, to encode – oggenc; both have graphic housings. More details on both are in the following sections.

MP3
MP3 or MPEG-1 audio layer 3 is by far the most popular format for storing and transmitting compressed data. This format was developed by the Frauenhofer Institut, Germany. However, despite the ubiquity of the format, it should not be forgotten that the patent for MP3 encoding and decoding algorithms belongs to a single company, so the end user at any time may find themselves in a very disadvantageous environment, such as It has already happened with the developers of free MP3 data compression tools …. You can get details about the license conditions on the developers website.

WMA
The WMA format is a proprietary product of Microsoft. It failed to occupy a market segment comparable to MP3, but it has some popularity despite serious security concerns identified. At the moment, only the universal MPlayer player can play WMA files. There are no free data compression tools for this algorithm and its appearance is unlikely.

Uncompressed audio formats

Uncompressed audio formats

Uncompressed audio formats

Below, we list the various types of uncompressed linear audio formats. The first three are the ones that have become the main ones supported by most of today’s professional audio applications and are: audio swap file format :

-AIF, AIFF The audio exchange file format is of Apple (1985) origin and allows the storage of mono or multichannel samples of 8 or 16 bits and various sampling rates. Being a format designed to be portable, it can also be easily converted (as we will see, Microsoft RIFF is similar) and is therefore often used. Extensions RIFF WAVE :

 

-WAV Developed by Microsoft and IBM in 1992, the RIFF WAVE (whose full name is Resource Sharing File Format Waveform Audio Format) follows the specifications of the more general rich information file format. It was introduced starting with Windows 3.1 and quickly became the most popular format for PC applications. WAV files support various types of sampling: they are single or multi-channel, 8 or 16 bits at different sampling rates with various encoding systems, even if the most common are PCM and ADPCM. Extensions TRANSMISSION WAVE FORMAT (BWF) :

Uncompressed audio formats

 

-WAV It is an extension of the popular WAVE format and was created by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in 1997 and updated in 2001 and 2003. The purpose of this format is to add to the normal .WAV metadata format to facilitate the exchange of data between different platforms and different audio applications, allowing the files thus encoded to identify themselves autonomously and allow synchronization with other recordings. Since the only difference from “normal” WAVE files is in the extended information written in the file header area, the two formats are absolutely compatible and a particular player is not required for playback. In order to overcome the limitation on the maximum size of the WAVE file (2 Gb) in 2006, it was specified as an extension of the BWF l! RF-64, SD2 Sound Designer II Format SD2f file extension The Sound Designer 2 format is proprietary to Digidesign and is the evolution of the original Sound Designer 1 format, unlike which it structures the data so that all audio samples are stored in the file’s data fork and all parameters in place . resource holder. This is extremely convenient in files where the data fork can become hundreds of Mb and more, because it is possible to modify, add, cut the parameters of the audio file without having to modify the sample data, a feature that saves a lot of time, especially at a time when computers and hard drives were vastly smaller in capacity and slower in data processing and writing. It can also be monophonic or multichannel (interleaved), Sampling depth of up to 24 bits at different sampling frequencies of up to 192 KHz, as in the case of Pro Tools HD. It should be noted that in multitrack applications such as Pro Tools, the standard professional market software created for a DSP based card system, each track is recorded in a separate mono file, even for stereo or multi-channel tracks. In the case of a stereo track, the “split stereo” file is used, which consists of two monophonic files with the same name but with the two suffixes .L and .R (or in previous versions (L) and (R) ), that remain physically separated but that the application treats as a single stereophonic file, operating all the editing operations on both files simultaneously in perfect phase coherence; In native applications (ie fully dependent on CPU processing power), all those in practice outside of Pro Tools software (not Pro Tools LE or Pro Tools M-Powered who are also “native” even if they depend of specific Digidesign software or M-Audio production hardware), instead, the use of “interleaved” files is generalized, that is, stereo or multichannel files in which all the channels are stored in a single file. The stereo track is represented by a single file containing the two channels, which are “written” in blocks (first a number n of blocks from the left channel followed by an equal number n of blocks from the right channel, and so on). This type of file, created to dominate applications, used in multitrack applications still generates a bit of confusion, because although it is more practical (in theory) to be used within the native application, it needs to become a “split” file when imported into Pro Tools.

What are the digital audio formats?

What are the digital audio formats?

PCM, Wav, Aiff. Compression. Mp3, Ogg, Wma.

Working with digital audio is almost a chore for puzzle specialists. Since audio is saved on the computer and all computer files have extensions, we have to interpret each acronym and abbreviation.

The extension is the end of the file after the name and period. It is used to know what type of file it is, whether it is a text, a video or an audio. There are many extensions and they are all sure to sound familiar to you: WAV, RM, MP3, WMA, OGG … Let’s play, then, to decipher puzzles and see what each of these acronyms means.

 

 UNCOMPRESSED DIGITAL AUDIO FILES

.PCM

It is not a file type or format, but a technique of transforming analog to digital audio without any compression. (1) Therefore, we do not see audios with the pcm extension. We work with PCM when digitizing, but we always keep files with one of these extensions:

.WAV: (Wave, wave in English)

It is the most widely used uncompressed digital audio format. It belongs to Microsoft / IBM.

.AIFF: (Audio Interchange File Format)

It is similar to WAV but for Apple Macintosh or MAC computers.

.CDA

: These are the audio tracks recorded on Compact Disc that also use the PCM system.

All uncompressed files are large. Approximately 10 megabytes for every minute of audio. These are the formats used to store audio at a professional level since the quality is very good. But when we don’t need that much quality and we’re short on space, it’s time to use file compression.

 AUDIO COMPRESSION

Compressing is reducing and whenever we reduce we lose something. The same is true for digital audio. The latest advances have allowed compression to be done with the least possible loss of quality, but there always are. Against that, much has been gained in reducing the size of the files.

While a 4-minute audio in WAV format takes approximately 40 megabytes, that same audio, compressed to MP3, can reduce its weight to 4 megabytes, 10 times less. And apparently, they sound the same. (2)

SAVE WITHOUT COMPRESSING

When working in production, it is always recorded in WAV, without compression. In that same way it is edited and mixed. If the final result of the edition is an audio to be uploaded on the Web or saved on the hard drive of a computer, we can compress it to mp3 but with a quality of no less than 160 kbps.

If, on the contrary, the production has as its final destination to be recorded on a CD, never compress, always leave the audio in WAV and burn it that way on the CD.

1. How does compression work?

It is not about wrinkling or crushing the audio. Most audio compression systems take advantage of a “defect” in our ears to reduce file size. It is called masking.

Masking is a property of the human ear that prevents it from distinguishing two frequencies close together within the same range, one masking the other. For example, if a sound with a frequency of 12 Khz and another of 12.2 Khz sounds at the same time in a song, we could remove one of the two without being noticed when listening to it.

In this way, the compressor “subtracts” the masked frequencies, which reduces the number of bytes. And fewer bytes in computing translates into smaller files, but not shorter. The song, when compressed, lasts as long as it is uncompressed.

2. Quality of compressed files

We saw in the previous question that digital audio has two parameters: the sampling frequency (the optimum is 44.1 Khz.) And the resolution or size of each sample (8 or 16 bits). By compressing, we add a third parameter to these two, the bitrate. It is the amount of kilobytes per second (kbps) and refers to the quality of the compression.

• A lower number of Kbps, more compression, smaller file size, but lower quality.

• A higher number of Kbps, less compression, larger file size and more quality.

A compressed audio at 128 Kbps has a higher compression level than a 256 Kbps one. That means that 128 is a smaller file and less quality than 256. Although you must have a cat’s ear to distinguish between both!

VARIABLE OR CONSTANT BIT

Some files have a constant bit rate per second (CBR Constant Bit Rate) and others have a variable one (VBR Variable Bit Rate). The constant is always the same for all audio, for example 128 kilobytes per second. In the variable method, what the compressor does is use more bits when there are parts of the audio where there are more frequencies and it cannot mask all of them.

 

COMPRESSED FILE FORMATS

Mp3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3)

It achieves high compressions without much loss, although it all depends on the quality of the compression we use. 128 Kbps and below is not recommended.

Although mp3 is the most widely used compression standard, especially for audio on Web pages, the great drawback is its patent. So any player or editing software that wants to use it has to pay for it.

.OGG (Vorbis)

As a result of this patent, the Xiph.org Foundation developed in 2002 a completely free codec (5) for audio compression. Similar in characteristics to mp3, it is beginning to be used a lot on the Web and in some players since manufacturers do not have to pay the costs of the patent. At this point, it is difficult to completely replace the mp3 but it is eating up a lot of ground.

.AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)

The compression level is higher than mp3 (MPEG-1) without major loss of quality. AAC is one of the codecs used in the new MPEG-4 compression standard. This audio format is used in players like the iPod and in some of the new digital radio systems. AAC is shaping up to be the successor to the mp3.

.RAM (also RM or RA)

They are the files of the Real Network company for audio. The problem is that its reproduction and edition is very limited to software from the same company and few others.

.WMA (Windows Media Audio)

It is Windows’ bet on compressed formats. It is like a WAV, but smaller and less quality. While mp3 and ogg files are played by almost all players and editors, the same is not the case with wma files, so it is rarely used.

. AA3 (ATRAC – Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding)

Format invented by Sony. It is the one used by minidisc recorder-players.