Choose the sound format well into 2020

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Although many dematerialized music rhymes with MP3, it is recommended to take a tour of the owner in existing dematerialized formats to choose the audio format well when digitizing their CD / Vinyl.

What is an audio format?

An audio format is to simplify a kind of container where dematerialized music is stored: it is important to choose it carefully when ripping a CD, because its properties will directly affect the quality of the file created.

Therefore, selecting audio format is a crucial step and it is advisable to guarantee three things with priority: the quality, functionality, and the fact that they are standard and legible on a maximum of devices, whether on a PC or MAC computer, but also on your smartphone / car radio …

It is also important to understand that in general, and although there are exceptions, the choice of audio format consists of placing the cursor in the middle between the quality on the one hand and the space occupied by the media on the other. storage.

Choose audio format: which challengers?

select aac-ogg-wma mp3 audio format
The 4 semi-amazing audio formats with destructive compression.

MP3:
Give glory where honor is due. MP3 is just as popular as it is underrated: it will have done a lot for dematerialized music by itself and has enabled millions of people around the world to discover a new way to listen to their music.

MP3 is a format of strong and destructive compression, in other words, a large part of the musical signal will be suppressed (priority, frequencies inaudible to the human ear … but not only!), And therefore offers a quality that only becomes good for from 256/320 kbps.

Is this a good opportunity today? Not being the best from a quality standpoint, choosing mp3 audio format today allows you to be sure that you can listen to it on all devices released for 10 years. MP3 is dematerialized music, what jeans should wear: versatility and the highest “acceptance rate” in the world.

Note that it is also advisable to choose mp3 audio format if you have limited storage space on a smartphone, for example because it is (in the company of AAC / WMA / OGG) the type of format that requires least space.

AAC:
This format is similar to “Apple MP3”. It has the same qualities and shortcomings as the previous one with some details: slightly better at the same speed, on the other hand it is far less standard: except for the fact that manufacturers have made explicit agreements (and pay because they require a license) , we find in Practice much fewer AAC compliant devices.

So it should be avoided unless you only have Apple products around you (even the car radio? I doubt it) and even in this case they are all perfectly mp3 compatible.

WMA
If AAC is Apple’s MP3, WMA Microsoft is MP3. Even less widespread because it doesn’t benefit from iTunes / Music Store / iPOD steamroller (who still remembers Zune’s iPod killer? Miscrosoft)

Again, forget the same qualities and shortcomings as MP3, but even less standard, therefore urgent. I even advise you to convert your existing WMA files to MP3 at a similar or slightly higher bit rate to ensure durability. Therefore, choosing WMA audio format today is not a good idea.

OGG:
We also find it under the name “vorbis”, we also have an mp3 clone here, except it is compatible with the free world (understand free) a bit in the same format as Linux.

Ogg is a completely free format unlike the previous ones, but despite this it is very confidential and is generally used only by those who take a pro-free dogmatic stance. While this position is quite respectable, selecting OGG audio format in 2014/2015 does not seem like a good idea because it is not widely distributed and above all it is like MP3, a destructive format.

WAV:
WAV is the first format on the list that does not deteriorate the quality extracted from the CD, and therefore offers an identical bit rate of 1411 kbps and therefore provides optimal quality.

However, the format shows its age and is limited in several ways: no space optimization (one second of silence = one second of noise) and no metadata or album cover management.

Therefore, choosing Wav audio format is similar to generating very heavy files and simply impossible to organize properly in a music database.

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Some of the most popular digital audio formats.

Main audio formats without loss of quality.

WAVE (.wav) – This is the most common uncompressed audio file format. When you rip audio from a music CD on your computer, this will be the format you get. It takes up a lot of space (1411 KB of information per second on 4400 Hz / 16 bits of stereo music), but reproduces the sounds in a quiet way. In terms of quality and amount of information, it resembles the AIFF (.aif) format, which is mainly part of the Mac world. Suitable for audio files and those that record music.

FLAC (.flac) – Free Lossless Audio Codec: It is an open source codec that is often used to store music CDs on the computer without loss of quality. While .wav offers uncompressed audio, .flacs are called “lossless c compressed”. However, compression is minimal and the vast majority of people do not notice differences between a Wave file and a FLAC file. However, they take up less space than WAV files. This is possible because they use a variable amount of compression as needed. This means that, in the case of very complex and rich music parts, it uses encodings that are equal to WAV files (1411 Kb / s data). However, in the case of the “simpler” parts, the number of bits used to represent them will be smaller. It is suitable for demanding ears who also want to save some space on their hard drives.

APE Monkey’s Audio is one of the most powerful and popular lossless multimedia compression algorithms for audio files.
The lossless format, that is without data loss, ensures that the original sound quality is maintained in smaller files than compressed sample formats (such as WAV).
The format used is “.ape”, Monkey’s Audio allows compression of a WAVin mono source and also the opposite procedure, ie mono decoding for other formats such as WAV or MP3

ALAC Apple Lossless Audio Codec: Similar to FLAC, which always uses maximum compression. The quality is good on average, but the format is not as effective as FLAC in terms of weight. Not all players support it, so if your life is not exclusively dedicated to Apple and its products, it’s not a recommended format. Other important but less popular lossless audio formats are Monkey’s Audio (.ape) and OptimFROG (.ofr).

AIFF Audio Interchange File Format is a standard file format used to store audio recordings on a personal computer. The format was developed by the Apple computer based on Electronic Arts electronic exchange format and is often used on Apple Macintosh systems, which is why it is also called Apple Interchange File Format.
The audio data in the AIFF file is not compressed, so the file tends to be much larger than other formats, both lost and lost, such as ALE or MP3. One minute sound records approx. 10 MB of data, this is because it is a format created for sharing, although it is also used for editing.
However, there are compressed formats, called AIFFC (AIFF compressed), that can reduce the file size by a third (AIFF3) or a sixth (AIFF6), but this results in a great loss of quality, so there is virtually no use.

The most important sound quality formats in loss quality.

MP3 (.mp3) or MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III – is the best known compressed audio standard. It was the forerunner of the category (it was published as an international standard in 1998) and is still the most widely used. Minifying a WAV file to MP3 makes it up to 90% easier for MB. The quality varies depending on the bit rate, ranging from 32 to 320 Kbit information for every second of music. The default is 128 Kb / s. At 320 the performance is pretty good.

AAC (.aac) – Advanced audio coding. It’s an Apple standard that iTunes uses by default when importing music. It works like MP3, and with the same bit rate, it takes the same space. The difference is in the way compression is handled. In simple words, “music” sums up another way. According to many people it sounds better than MP3. Especially suitable for those who use iPhone and iPod to listen to music.

WMA (.wma) – This is a proprietary format from Microsoft and is considered Redmund’s response to MP3. Its incompatibility with the iPod makes it very uncomfortable. Incidentally, although most players support MP3, WMA does not. Basically, unless your music world starts and ends with Windows Media Player, it’s a generally discouraged format. It is not compatible with Mac and iTunes.

OGG VORBIS: It is an open source or free format, which means that it does not require any license to be implemented in an audio player (the details are irrelevant for us users). The quality is comparable to MP3, perhaps a little higher. A noble and well-made creation, but not widespread enough to justify its massive use. In light of all this, therefore, recording music in WAV and broadcasting it in MP3 or AAC is the most reasonable option. In this way, you will have quality when you need it and the guarantee of usability of music wherever you are.

Lossless audio formats

WAV (.wav) The WAV format is nothing more than a digital recording of real sounds, sounds that come from a source outside the PC. With WAV music, drums, piano, guitar, bass or vocals are heard the same, no matter what computer the file is played on (with the same acoustic quality of hardware components, of course).

DSD (DFF, .Dsf) are used in digital media such as Super Audio CDs. Sampling quality is very high (variable sampling rate is approximately 64 times higher than for audio CDs), although according to several operators in this sector, it must be absolutely determined whether the final quality is higher than the sampling quality. PCM (used in high quality Blu-Ray and DVD Audio). I can reproduce free readers like Foobar 2000 or AIMP on our computer.

AIFF (.aif). It’s the Apple audio format used by Apple for Mac. It’s basically the WAV equivalent used by Windows.

APE (Mono Audio; .ape): Ordinary with a loss that allows us to reduce by about 50% the space occupied by our music (in some cases even more), without losing quality. In this way, an album that takes up about 600 MB in wav format averages 300 MB (much more than about 100 MB of high-speed mpc and 60 mp3 mp3, but the quality is the same as the original); On average, I speak because there are certain types of music where the level of compression is even higher. You can use WinAmp plug-ins to listen to songs in this format, or better yet, a player that uses it natively as Foobar 2000. Right now, it’s probably the best lossless codec, considering the balance between speed and compression (Click here for a lossless comparison table) format.)

Apple Lossless Audio Codec – ALAC (.m4a) This is a lossless audio codec created by Apple a few years ago and available as an open source from Apple since October 2011. Some programs support it in Windows (encoded). , including DbPowerAmp.

FLAC (.flac): a very popular open source format. It used to be very popular (among music purists), but some space has been lost with the MonkeyAudio bee format, which allows for better compression in the same quality. Compared to others, it always came in .ape format (but also after WavPack).

LA (Lossless Audio: .la): The lossless format that compresses the most. Conversion to this format is very slow, but achieves the best compression in history (for example, MonkeyAudio, this album would take up about 290 MB compared to 300 MB in APE). This is not widespread, as some MB obtained on a bee is not worth the long wait (and less support from third-party programs), but it is the winner of my lossless format comparison.

OPTIM FROG (.ofr) – Excellent lossless codec, best after LA as compressibility. Compression, when set to slightly high levels, is about 3 times slower than Monkey Audio and the gain in MB is about 2%. Like all other formats on this site, you can listen without the addition of Foobar 2000.

WAVPACK (.wv, wvc) – is a valid open source compression format that allows lossless, lossy and hybrid results. The compression rate is high and the compression is good. Another interesting hybrid format is that the lossy file is merged with another file, which allows you to completely restore the original file without loss in case we want to restore it.

An overview of the main audio formats that can be found on your computer

Codec for mp3, mpc, flac, mono, ogg vorbis and more.

For convenience, audio formats can be divided into unprofitable (unprofitable) and unprofitable (or unprofitable without losing quality).

The idea of loss formats (most common among ordinary users) stems from the idea that the human ear misunderstands all the sounds that are in a standard WAV file at 44,100 samples per second.

In this way (as in the JPG format of the images) we will drop the high frequencies, which are thought to be less different from our hearing. The more these frequencies are reduced, the more space is allocated to our track (for example, 3 MB instead of 6 MB for a few minutes of song or much more) … but it also degrades the quality of the result, as the cut frequencies are no longer so “inaudible”.

Converting to WAV from lossy formats does not provide any benefit (unless you have to process the track and save it several times, in which case the quality loss will be limited to the first step); There are also programs that are able to bring some of these high frequencies back into our tracks, such as Steinberg Clean Plus or others (such as the first versions of Easy CD Creator or other, even more professional ones), but by doing the job properly , more than No they can do a lot.

Unbearable (lossy) formats try to reduce the space occupied by the track without touching the sound; the degree of compression will be much less than the loss, but there will be no loss of quality. If it is converted back to WAV (possibly processed), the sound will be identical to the previous one.

To listen to audio tracks in various formats, we recommend using audio players that can support different formats, such as AIMP and Foobar2000.

Lost audio formats (lossy quality)

WMA (.wma): Windows Media audio format, compressed and very similar to mp3. Microsoft audio compression format. Files compressed in this format are approximately 20% smaller than MP3 files

MP3 (.mp3) is briefly suitable for the MPEG 1 III layer and identifies audio files that use this algorithm. This is a standard that removes inaudible sounds from the human ear. This way the 128 kbps mp3 track takes up 1/11 of its space in .wav or audio CD format.
Some rate 128-bit bits as “CD quality”; In fact, the frequencies that are reduced to save hard disk space are not so “inaudible”. 192 The results are starting to get good and at only 320 kbps we can talk about the quality of CDs … Until a few years ago the quality of mp3 was considered high, but now with the advent of more modern sound cards, 24 bits: we continue to use mp3 compared to other formats like like ogg or mpc, more for its diffusion and compatibility than the quality of the result. A 600 MB album in wav format will take up about 50 MB in 128 mp3 format.

To convert an audio track to mp3, it’s a good idea to use the Lame mp3 codec (free) in all the best conversion programs (download).

AAC (.aac and .mp4): A lossy format that delivers high quality (currently the highest among lossy formats), at least one step higher than mp3. A feature of this format is the ability to protect DRM from being freely copied from one platform to another (unless applications are used to protect it).

AC3 (ac3). This is the audio format used by DVDs. We usually find it at 384 kbps (and 6 channels), but it is also possible that you only have it at 2 channels and lower speeds. One of the free programs that supports it (and allows, for example, to reduce the bit rate) is BeLight (Besweet).

OGG VORBIS (.ogg) is a great open source codec. It is able to give better results than mp3, especially at low bit rates (higher quality, less space), which is less than 128 kbps (download). It is compatible with virtually all audio players (both software and audio).

MusePack (.mpc): Very large output format, especially at high bit rates (more than 192 kbps and above). The results are much better than mp3: just listen to one 192 kbps mp3 encoded track and one mpc track at the same bit rate to immediately feel the difference (in some cases without words …). Many people considered this to be the best lossy audio format, at least until mp4 was released. It is compatible with WinAmp through plug-ins and, on average, with more advanced players such as Foobar 2000.

Digital audio formats

Below is a non-exhaustive list of the most widely used digital audio formats.

AIFF – Audio Exchange File Format

Apple uses a standard audio format. This can be considered the wav equivalent of a mac environment. Audio data is organized according to PCM encoding and is not compressed. There is also a condensed option defined as AIFF-C or AIFC.

AAC – Advanced Audio Encoding

This format is based on MPEG2 and MPEG4 lossy compression standards. It was created as a successor to the mp3 format, which uses a slightly better algorithm. This allows you to get slightly better quality for the same speed.

ALAC – Apple Lossless Audio Codec

This is Apple’s lossless audio format. Also called ALE (Apple Lossless Encoder).

ATRAC (.mp3) – acoustic coding of adaptive transformation

Old Sony audio format with ATRAC compression. Files always have a .mp3 extension, but you need the ATRAC3 driver to open them. MiniDisc was a commercial advertising product that took advantage of this type of format. The codec was later improved by subsequent enhancements such as ATRAC3 (1999), ATRAC3plus (2002), and ATRAC Advanced Lossless (2006).

AS

This is the standard audio format used by Sun, Unix, and Java operating systems. Data encoding can be PCM (uncompressed) or compressed with μ-law, a-law G729 codecs. The Au audio format was introduced by Sun Microsystems. It was a format used on NeXT systems and early websites. Initially, the file did not have a header (the original data from the file) because the encoding was unique: 8 bits with µ-law compression and a sampling rate of 8000 Hz. The latest version of this format contains a header consisting of six blocks. 32 bits, an optional block of information, and finally audio data.

FLAC is a free lossless audio codec

It is an audio codec with lossy compression (without losing information). Data compression can reach 50-60% without losing quality.

M4P

It is a patented version of the MP4 AAC format with a DRM (Digital Rights Management) system developed by Apple to download music from the iTunes Music Store.

MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 (formerly ISO / IEC 14496-14: 2003) is a storage medium for multimedia data. It is mainly used to store audio / video data, but can also be used to store other types of data, such as still images and subtitles. Like all modern formats, this format allows data to be sent over the Internet in real time: this feature is implemented by adding a data path for transmission control. The only extension for files that use this codec is .mp4.

MP3 – MPEG layer III audio recording

It is currently the most widely used audio format. The MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 III audio layer, commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented lossy format. It is used for digital music use at the user (non-professional) level.

OGG

It is an open source container that supports a variety of formats, the best known being the Vorbis audio format. This format offers MP3-like audio compression, but is less common. The big difference with mp3 is the absolute free format. In terms of performance, with the same parameters, Vorbis is slightly more efficient than MP3.

The Ogg cache can handle multiple independent streams at the same time: audio, video, text (such as subtitles), and additional data (metadata).

RA and RM

This is a format developed by Real Audio to transmit audio over the Internet. The .Ra format allows you to store all the audio files you want to transfer in one file. The codec enables transmission from very low quality to high accuracy.

RAW

A RAW file can contain any type of data, but in reality it is mainly used for PCM-encoded (uncompressed) audio data. Thus, unlike the uncompressed audio format (wav, aiff), a flat file does not contain headers with information about the data itself (usually the header contains information about: sampling rate, quantitative bits, channels, type of markup used for the ideas). A typical file extension for this type is: .raw, .pcm, without the extension.

Vox

This audio format uses Dialogic ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation). This performs 4. compression. Vox files are similar to wave files, except that they do not have a header, so you need to specify frequency information.

Better audio formats

You have decided to digitize the music tracks in your audio CD collection by transferring everything to your computer. You started to examine the possibility of converting it into a format that is more convenient for you.

With a little experience in this area, however, you would like to get some advice on the subject so you can make the best decision. How do you say? Things are exactly the same and you want to know if I can help you by giving you the best audio formats? Of course yes, that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

If you allow me a few minutes of your free time, I can actually use threads and characters to tell you which audio formats are most popular, what strengths and weaknesses they have and what purposes they may be more or less convenient for. Contact. Condition to choose those who you think are actually right for you. To complete the information and give you an even more comprehensive overview of the topic, I will also indicate at the end of the article which tools you can use to carry out various conversion processes. You will find that once you have read this manual, there is no longer any doubt about what to do.

In order to? How about putting the conversation aside and finally getting to the point? Yes? Excellent! So I suggest that you don’t waste any more time and immediately focus on the topic. Make yourself comfortable in front of your trusted computer and read everything below. I am sure you can say that you are happy and satisfied with what you have learned. As always, I hope you enjoy reading.

What are the most common video formats?

The choice of audio and video codecs and containers affects video quality and file size. Here we show you how to find the format that best suits your needs.

Decades and decades of developments in the audiovisual field have led to a result that can be seen as strange in a way. While in other sectors the continuous development has led to a very pronounced standardization (think of the DOC or PDF format), the situation in multimedia is at least worse.

One example is the world of audio formats, which is animated by strong “competition” and a variety of available options. Indeed, it is no less than that of video formats. In this case, we actually have to deal with a separation between codecs and containers (we’ll see what they are and what role they play) that will make things even more complicated. So when converting a movie, you need to be careful to choose the right codec and video format to avoid creating files that are too large or simply unreadable. In short, the mistake is just around the corner.

Differences between containers and codecs

Before analyzing the situation and determining the most commonly used video formats, some basic concepts need to be clarified: First: What is the difference between the codec and the container? In the audio world, if the codec used to digitize the audio track matches the “final” file format, the codecs used in the video differ from the file format that the video file will adopt at the end of the digitization process. The reason will be explained soon and is in the multimedia nature of a video.

A film actually contains video and audio data: the conversion or playback software must be able to analyze both multimedia transmissions and therefore requires different algorithms that work with one or the other type of data transmission. This is exactly what codecs do: Since the name, code and decoding of data (audio and video) consist of films, you can convert them to another video format or play them back with a media player. Even with regard to containers, it is enough to use the literal meaning of the word: These are files that contain both the video and audio sequences and “provide” codecs for reading and playback.

What are the most common codecs?

As already mentioned, a codec is responsible for compressing and decompressing the video files and determines how they are played on the screen of the PC or smart TV. Each operating system provides the user with dozens and dozens of different codecs, each useful for encoding and decoding a particular type of file, even if new ones can be installed by downloading special software or packages from the Internet. Among the most commonly used codecs we find FFmpeg, Divx, Xvid, H.264 and its development H.265, VP9 and VP 10 (also known as the name of the Google codec).

What are the most commonly used containers?

Containers, on the other hand, have the task of “bundling” the audio and video stream processed by the codecs and can therefore be used for the media player software. Containers are determined, among other things, by the “final” video file format. The most common are: Avi, Wmv, Mov, Flav and Mp4.

-Avi. The AVI video format (short for Audio Video Interleave), developed by Microsoft and introduced in 1992 as part of its video for Windows technology, is one of the oldest used today. It is so widespread and used that many consider it to be the de facto industry standard. Its simple infrastructure (elementary, one would almost say) makes it easy to use on different operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android and the most popular browsers) and enables the “storage” of streams that are processed by different codecs
Flv. This is the video format that resulted from compression by Adobe Flash software and was developed almost exclusively for playing movies on the Internet. If it could be seen as the de facto standard for video file formats on the web until a few years ago, this is no longer the case today: The spread of HTML 5 and the discovery of some bugs in the software caused it to change a bit On the one hand, however, the FLV video file format remains a favorite for those who generally create video for the network: with its compression algorithms, you can indeed get good quality small videos

Audio formats

Compression

Compressions are systems for reducing the file size by using different types of algorithms and / or encodings.

There are two types of compression: lossless (compression), which compresses the file without deleting information. Decompression can therefore exactly return the original and lossy (lossy) compression, eliminating redundant parts that are considered irrelevant or irrelevant and the decompression does not return to the original.
It is clear that the first system preserves the integrity of the original, but less compressed, while the second implies a loss of quality, but compresses much more, in proportion to the degree of loss one is willing to accept. Let’s look at a few examples.

Lossless compression

Lossless compression is based on reducing the redundancy typical of human production.

For example, in a book dedicated to experimental music, the phrase “experimental music” is repeated many times with 19 characters. At this point, simply replace it with a symbol that is normally not included in the text, e.g. ‘# 1 #’ to reduce a term from 19 characters to one of 3 and store 16 characters for each occurrence. Actually we have to say “for every occurrence after the first”, because in order to unpack the text, we also have to create an index of the substitutions in which it is written in this case
# 1 # = “experimental music”.
Obviously, many other words or phrases are repeated several times in the book, and each of them can be replaced by a symbol such as # 2 #, # 3 #, …, # n #, where n is a progressive number, which ultimately makes significant savings.
The Lempel-Ziv (LZ) algorithm uses a similar system, the derivatives of which underlie many modern lossless compression programs, including the well-known ZIP.
In fact, the ancestor of many lossless encoders is the so-called Huffman coding. It is a redundancy elimination system that was developed in 1952 by the researcher of the same name, then an MIT student. His algorithm solves the problem of encoding a series of strings (string = any character set) as compactly as possible, taking into account the frequency with which strings occur: the most common is assigned the shortest symbol in to maximize compression. Here is a good example dealing with Huffman coding issues.

Another type of lossless compression, which is always based on reducing redundancy, is the so-called Run Length Encoding (RLE), which works in a very simple way. Suppose we have the following string of 20 characters
ABBBBBBBBBCDEEEEFGGG

By applying the RLE it will
A 9BCD * * * 4EF 3G

for a total of 13 characters with a saving of 35%.
In practice, a code consisting of the character and the number of repetitions was inserted instead of the repeated characters. The asterisk indicates that the following is the number of repetitions and is not part of the chain (this is of course the basic principle; the details of the coding may vary).
Of course, this system is not productive with text, but it is the case with images where long stripes of the same color are fairly common.

Lossy compression

Lossy compression is based on the elimination of the information components that are considered to be more or less irrelevant depending on the compression level required. At low compression levels, only the really irrelevant details are removed, while at higher levels, the sensitive details are also removed.
An example that is not audio is the encoding of JPEG images, in which nuances are eliminated by assigning neighboring pixel groups the same color if their difference is less than a value that is proportional to the degree of compression. On this page you can see the effect of the size reduction and the corresponding loss of quality when increasing the compression levels.

Further information on compression on Wikipedia (free, community-created encyclopedia) can be found here in English. Wikipedia also exists in Italian, but the content is smaller.
First class compressed audio formats
Lossless (lossless)
These formats work similarly to zip. You compress the content without removing anything. At the time of listening, it is necessary to perform a decompression and to return to the original in one of the linear formats already shown.
Since it is lossless compression, the comparison between these codecs is not made in

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.

MAIN AUDIO FORMATS

Even the audio formats differ in their versatility and level of compression, and even if they are not as numerous as the video formats, it is better to look at the properties to get satisfactory results according to the requirements of our work.

Microsoft Wave [Extension: WAV] It is Microsoft’s proprietary format and is certainly the most widely used. This diffusion depends on commercial aspects and the fact that it is the most supported among the competitors. It has various compressions and is a versatile and highly editable format. For this reason, it is suitable for general digital audio, both for multimedia publications (although there are certainly better formats) and for desktop video (real standard). An excellent program for processing wave files (but also other formats) is CoolEdit.

MPEG Audio (extension: MPG / MP3) MP3 stands for MPEG1 Layer3. The MPEG algorithm, the basis of MP3, emerged from the need to develop a world standard for the representation of moving images and audio. This standard was developed in 1988 for the treatment of audio and video signals and has the special feature of compressing files and reducing them by 12 times compared to their natural size.

This high-compression format is based in particular on theories of psychoacoustics: each individual has a hearing that is sensitive to frequencies from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, and in particular the man perceives sounds between 2 and 4 kHz better. In addition, some sounds mask nearby frequencies so that you cannot hear all of the sounds.

These considerations have led to the development of an algorithm that eliminates all “redundant” noise for the human ear and achieves a high level of file compression and sound quality that is comparable to the digital and can be downloaded directly to your PC.

MP3 enables good results, making small and high quality playback compatible. An established audio standard is the MPEG Layer3 version, which produces very small files of excellent quality, an excellent compromise when duplicating and creating audio files on CD. The XingMPEG encoder is an excellent software for creating MP3s.

Given the prevalence and importance of the topic on a legal level, let’s find out what it is and what benefits we can achieve by using this MPEG format.

An audio CD generally contains 60 to 78 minutes and is characterized by a quantization level of 16 bits and a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, ie 44,100 samples per second. The quantization level describes the maximum number of intensity levels that a single sample can hold: for example 8 bits = 256 levels (28), 16 bits = 65,356 levels (216). The higher the number of levels that the signal can assume, the more precise the signal reproduction.

There is approximately 650 MB of data on a normal audio CD.

Conventionally, to reduce the size, we can work in two ways: 1) Reduce the quantization: that is, convert the samples from 16 bits to 8 bits, but lose the dynamics, quality and get a lot of noise; 2) Reduce the sampling frequency. As a result, the frequency range would decrease in the event of a loss of resolution.

The MPEG format, on the other hand, reduces the amount of information stored and therefore significantly reduces the size of the files by filtering out unimportant audio information according to the models developed on this basis. From research on the perception of the human ear, you decide which information is important and which is not . These studies have enabled us to know how our brain analyzes sounds, except irrelevant ones that are imperceptible (e.g. ultrasound).

The MPEG audio format also performs this process of removing intelligent weak signals. So if there is a strong signal, the weakest signal is not perceived.

When using a high compression rate, the MPEG encoder eliminates parts of audible information that are still of minor importance. With a slight compression rate, the difference to the uncompressed original is minimal.

Layers I, II, III can be viewed as the layers through which the MPEG format has evolved. All layers are based on the same perceptual coding scheme, the complexity of which increases for each of them. Layer II has superior quality at lower bit rates than Layer I; However, the most complex coding system currently available is Layer III,

MP4 (Extension: MP4) is an audio compression technology recently launched by Global Music Outlet (GMO) under license from AT&T Labs (January 99). As you understand, it is a further development of the MP3 format and seems to offer the ability to offer it a higher compression factor, which should even reach a factor of 16. Although the name is very similar, conceptually it has nothing to do with layer 3 and is actually in direct competition with it. Compressed MP4 files are presented as executable Win9x or WinNT files and offer the relatively encapsulated player.

Audio exchange (extension: AIF / AIFF) Format created to standardize the various audio standards between PC and Machintosh.

Microsoft NetShow (Extension: ASF) Audio extension of the format for streaming audio / video on the web.

Yamaha SoundVQ [Extension: VQF] Audio format released by Yamaha in direct competition with MP3.