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Audio formats, advantages

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. Also, some corruption schemes or lobbyists of transnational corporations in the field of audio recording interfere in our good cause of helping people to choose the best sound product.

The most popular MP3 format in the world reached the leaders of popular love solely because of the multi-million dollar investment in promotion. 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 play on your device, but you will not listen to it simply because the hardware and software resource and the speakers or headphones are not capable of reproducing 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 pointless.

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 also be able to call himself to 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 to make a joke look like a fresh bell pepper in the eyes of tomatoes.

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Highest quality music format. – part 6

Audio CD file: FLAC has a CUESHEET metadata block in which the audio CD markup table is stored.

For example, you can burn an audio CD to a single file and then import its markup table when encoding, so that the resulting file has the same layout as the disc. If the original audio CD is damaged, you can restore the partition table to write an exact copy of the disc.
Error resistance: Due to the division into frames, errors in the sequence are located at the level of the frame where the error occurred (usually a few hundredths of a second). In some codecs, a single error can cause the entire rest of the stream to be lost.

But this is all prose. The trick is this. As you know, the original CDs are divided into only 2 channels, that is, the usual STEREO. The Flac has the multi-channel playback capability, up to 8 channels BUT if you remove a copy of the Flac from the original compact, the multi-channel capability remains unused and as a result we have the same 2 channels and stereo. The size of flac differs from mp3 by about 6 times.

Monkey Audio (* .ape)

The * .ape format in which Monkey’s Audio encodes, the most popular among lossless codecs. Even those who don’t know what “lossless compression” have heard of it. The reason for its popularity is the free and very high quality codec. stream compression, which even exceeds traditional WinRAR archiver compression at maximum settings. Support for the format is implemented in various players (eg Foobar2000), a plugin for Winamp comes with Monkey’s own audio, and for all remaining players you can install one of the DirectShow filters (eg Radlight). The only downside to this format is the presence of the Windows platform only. The Playback plugin supports all popular features like gapless and replaygain and ID3 tags like MP3. When encoding the stream, there are five different compression rates available, from Fast to Insane. The latter option provides an unprecedented compression rate that no one else can match. A lossless codec, but the processor load when playing the resulting file is also quite large. Having installed the Monkey Audio Distribution Kit, you will be able to encode a few other formats as well, including OGG, WavPack, Shorten, Lame. All of them are also compatible with the graphical shell.

AAC (* .aac, * .mp4, * .m4a)
The main advantage of AAC is its support for multichannel audio, thanks to which it got a “permanent job” in DVD video production. At the moment, there are already quite a few AAC codecs, among which the most famous is AAC LC, used in Apple QuickTime technology. The use of Nero AAC in the Nero Burning Rom package is also common. The number of hardware players that support AAC is growing, the most popular now being the Apple iPod, which works with * .m4a files that are created with iTunes or downloaded from the Apple online store. In a sense, the AAC format can be called very viable, as it is already used in the industry and obviously it will not be allowed to “wear out” so easily. Hence the solid confidence of ordinary users, who may well rely on it, choosing a replacement for the old MP3.

DVD-Audio is a digital DVD format specially created for high-quality audio playback. A DVD-Audio disc allows you to record soundtracks with a different number of audio channels (from mono to 5.1).
Multi-channel audio support is a major advantage DVD-Audio has over previous formats. The presence of 5 loudspeakers allows the positioning of the sounds in a three-dimensional space, which offers two new possibilities: the precise transmission of the acoustics of the room and the creation of new sound images intertwining special effects with the musical content itself. The human hearing aid distinguishes the direction of sounds not only from left to right, but also from back to front (and, to a lesser extent, from top to bottom), so two channels of audio are not enough to simulate volume. .
The sound of the record can be quantized to 16, 20 or 24 bits, as well as sample rates of 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4 or 192 kHz. (A maximum of two channels of audio can be recorded at a sampling frequency of 176.4 or 192 kHz.)
There are two versions of the DVD-Audio format: simply DVD-Audio only for audio content and DVD-AudioV for audio with additional information.

SACD – Acronym for Super Audio Compact Disc – an optical disc format for storing music. Double Layer or Hybrid – readable on both regular CD players and SACD players.

Highest quality music format. – part 5

There are many music formats now. Not so long ago, the popular mp3 standard is outdated due to frequency cuts, and even a high bit rate doesn’t save it.

It is not a bad option to replace the Ogg format, BUT it also has losses, although they are smaller.

OGG Vorbis
The youngest format developed from scratch relatively recently is OGG Vorbis. Some predict a good future for it, others an imminent sunset, but most of those who have tried it in action agree that this is a very promising and very high-quality project. Let me remind you that both mp3PRO and WMA are commercial formats and consequently closed, unlike what OGG is an open project, with source codes available to anyone, making OGG Vorbis the fastest growing compression format , something like a project. LAME for MP3. Despite its young age, OGG has recently undergone a complete optimization of its algorithm to work with low bit rates. And now a new version format received the RC2 prefix to the name. At the moment, according to the available information, the OGG Vorbis encoder compresses the stream only with variable bit rate (VBR), performing compression with a bit rate of 32 to 350 kbps.

Due to the increasing volumes of the hard disk, the requirements for the quality of digitized music began to increase and lossless digitization began to gain more and more popularity.

A surprising example is the Flac format.
FLAC only supports fixed point samples, not floating point. It can handle any PCM bit resolution from 4 to 32 bits per sample, any sample rate from 1 Hz to 1,048,570 Hz in 1 Hz increments, and any number of channels from 1 to 8. Channels can be grouped in cases such as stereo and 5.1 channel surround to take advantage of inter-channel correlations to increase compression. FLAC uses CRC checksums to identify corrupted frames when used in a streaming protocol, and it also has a full MD5 hash of the raw PCM audio stored in its STREAMINFO metadata header.
FLAC (English Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a popular free codec for audio compression. Unlike the lossy Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and AAC codecs, it does not remove any information from the audio stream and is suitable for both daily listening and archiving an audio collection. Today, the FLAC format is compatible with many audio applications.
FLAC Features:
Lossless compression: PCM data encoding does not lead to information loss, therefore the decoded audio file is absolutely identical to the one entered into the encoder. To determine possible errors during file transfer, a 16-bit checksum is calculated for each frame. The integrity at a later stage is confirmed by the MD5 signature of the decompressed data, which is in the header and can be verified during replay, decoding or testing.
Speed: The encoding and decoding speed is asymmetric. For decoding, only whole number arithmetic is used, which requires much less computation than in perceptual codecs. Real-time decoding can be easily accomplished even on older computers.
Hardware Support: With a free base implementation and easy decoding, FLAC is the only lossless audio codec that has hardware support.
Streaming: each FLAC frame contains enough information to decode itself. The current FLAC framework is independent of the ones before and after. FLAC uses timing codes and checksums, allowing the decoder to quickly select a position in the current sequence.
Search: FLAC supports fast and accurate search, which is useful not only for playback, but also allows FLAC to be used in sound editors.
Metadata: FLAC has an extensible metadata system. New metadata blocks can be defined and implemented in future versions without losing backward compatibility. Metadata types are now defined for Audio CD lookup tables, labels, and markup lists. An application can use the APPLICATION metadata block after registering an ID for it.

Highest quality music format. – Part 4

 

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 PlayStation.

It is also a folk format, but for a little more advanced people. Which is reflected in the title.

OGG

In general, this is not a format, but a container, and in fact the name OGG says nothing about the sound it contains.

However, most of the time it contains the Vorbis codec.

Significantly improved sound quality relative to other lossy compression formats.
Smaller files can be recorded with the same sound quality.
An even cheaper format than MP3.

The problem is that the OGG format is free, so nobody invests money in its promotion. Therefore, it may not be supported everywhere and incompatibilities may arise.

Then you have to convert to MP3.

WMA
Microsoft’s proprietary format, therefore, although it is an improved version of MP3 and OGG, has not received widespread use and is not compatible with most devices and platforms.

Advice. If it is possible to use WMA instead of MP3, use the former. Cheaper and more pleasant to the ear.

For owners of advanced and expensive devices, branded desktops and mobiles, with high-quality headphones and speakers.

The downside to these formats is that file sizes of the same recording length will be roughly two to three times larger.

However, although lossless compression is stated, it should not be confused with high-fidelity audio recordings. There are minimal losses, although notable only for musicians.

FLAC
Free lossless audio codec. Its advantage is its great popularity, almost like MP3.

The compression ratio is up to 60% of the original file.
Compatible with most software platforms and devices.
It can be a profitable alternative when it comes to burning CDs. Almost indistinguishable in sound, but the advantage of saving almost half the disk space.

A THE C
Format for owners of Apple-branded devices, as others may not be supported.

Slightly less good than FLAC in terms of compression ratio.

But Apple owners simply have no choice: the free FLAC format does not work in principle on iOS and iTunes.

Lossless WMA
An improved version of the aforementioned WMA. Slightly lower than FLAC and ALAC. It has a significant advantage over ALAC, as WMA is compatible with Windows and Mac.

However, it is not very widespread, so if you have many different devices in use, there is likely an incompatibility.

Highest quality music format. – Part 3

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 play on your device, but you will not listen to it simply because the hardware and software resource and the speakers or headphones are not capable of reproducing 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 pointless.

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, compressed and lossy 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 also be able to call himself to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a bulky memory.

In the third case, since we have barely managed 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 to make a joke look like a fresh bell pepper in the eyes of tomatoes.

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

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, that’s how the old masters always thought of high quality.

Many people think of WAV as an uncompressed format. But in fact it is 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.

Fairly good compatibility with Windows and Mac.

AIFF
An analog of WAV 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 of all the writers worth listening to.
The MP3 format is such a solid eunuch, from which all the most reluctant cut, but began to show the ability to accumulate and save. Also, MP3 is a very inexpensive format.

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

Highest quality music format. – Part 2

AMR standard

As for this format, it may be one of the lowest quality. Its origin is related to the appearance of the first clumsy mobile phones, which still could not set ringtones in .mp3 format to ring.

So AMR was still able to replace natural sound with a certain amount of quality loss. But this quality cannot be compared with that offered by the more “advanced” formats.

MIDI

Interestingly, MIDI can also be attributed to what are commonly called “audio formats”. Although it is generally accepted (and many, in fact, still believe it) that the MIDI system is just a set of commands, you can argue with that. Decoding the MIDI abbreviation is actually a system for recording and editing certain keystrokes, pitch, tempo, key, effects, etc.

However, there are files with the .mid or midi extension that can be played quite easily in modern sequencers or studio recording software using Roland’s standard set of GM (General MIDI), GS (which is the same) sounds. or XG. (Extended MIDI) from Yamaha Corporation. The first two sets have 128 standard sounds, not counting the effects, and the third has almost three times as many.

FLAC
Now we come to one of the most modern and unique formats of our time. Music in FLAC audio format is gaining popularity today. This is due to the quality that true music lovers pay attention to in the first place.

If you look at it, this format was created on the basis of the well-known MP3. But if split-track layout was used before, there is no such thing in this format (at the moment, at the moment). The structure consists of one or two files, one of which is informational. Only specialized software audio players can play this format. The most famous can be called AIMP. Only when the main file is opened does the list of recorded tracks appear in the main bin. In such a player, switching between tracks is done in the same way as in any other. But there is no possibility of accidental deletion of a particular composition (as already mentioned, the information about them is contained in a single file).

Format compatibility
Naturally, all audio formats are compatible with each other today. In other words, any standard DVD player or home software can handle this effortlessly. The same goes for sound processing programs. The semi-professional and professional programs recognize all the formats known today (even in spite of the specifications of the operating systems). Audio editors, sequencers, plug-ins such as VST, RTAS (for Windows systems) or AU (for Mac OS X) can work with these formats in the so-called cross-platform mode.

Format conversion

There are several ways to change the audio. For example, you can open the “native” format and save the file in a different one. You can make it even easier. There are special converters for this. In them, you can simply load the desired initial format file from the list, and then just select the end. As they say, nothing at all.

Sound quality processing
Another thing is when it comes to changing part of the frequency of the original file. Here you cannot do without specialized software packages. It is with its help that you can change the quality of audio files. In this case, you can change not only the standard sample rate of 44100 Hz, increasing it, say, up to 96000 Hz, but also adjust the depth of the same 16 to 24 or 32 bits. And we are not talking about the fact that you can also adjust the bit rate, that is, the reproducible bandwidth, expressed in kilobits per second. The standard value is considered to be 128 kbps. The bit rate can be changed at your discretion, but the best sound quality is achieved at around 320 kbps. Of course, not everyone can tell the difference between standard sound and peak performance. However, it is worth trying to play an audio track with different data on good equipment. Here the difference will not keep you waiting.

Also, in addition to all these parameters, you can edit and much more. What is the software use of equalizers, limiters, compressors, crossovers, normalizers, de-essers, etc., etc. Each of these modules allows you to customize the sound, as they say, “on its own”. And absolutely all the formats known today can be processed by programs of this type.

Final comparison
Let’s try to make some kind of comparison between the formats used (although this is far from being all there is in the world of sound).

Highest quality music format.

Audio Formats

As a rule, today the term “audio” refers to everything that is connected with sound, whether it be playback, processing, mixing, mastering or listening to recordings. But few people know that since their inception, audio formats have constantly undergone many significant changes, sometimes for the better and then for the worse. The problem is that, compared to the original formats, the creators of the new formats tried to improve the sound quality, and this invariably affected the size of the played file. Downsizing, on the contrary, led to a loss of quality. But it was not always like this.

The first audio format in computer games
The first mention of computer sound came from the creation of primitive games at the time, in which sound was played through the system’s speaker. But no matter how hard the developers of such software (software) have been, the required quality could not be achieved, compatible with tape recorders or reel or cassette recordings.

That is why many manufacturers have started looking for solutions on how to change the audio format so that the sound is natural. Frankly, this has led to more competition than we have now. This applies not only to the material being played, but also to studio sound, live performances, quality or basic parameter settings in terms of knowledge of physics, acoustics, etc.

The appearance of the WAV format
It is believed that the first full quality of audio formats was associated with the appearance of the standard and the .wav file extension (this abbreviation was formed from the English word “wave” or wave). Anyway, he became the first-born that could be processed into computer programs on a professional level.

These files already had their own characteristics: sample rate, sound depth, bit rate, and much more. This sound was even compatible with what could be obtained after processing a conventional audio CD using certain instruments such as a conventional equalizer. But the size was clearly unjustified. For example, a three-minute track could be 20 to 50 MB.

CD discs
The audio CD format, or rather the .cda extension, appeared around the same time.

Unlike “wave” files saved on the hard disk, they cannot be edited. Today it can be opened in an audio processing program, reformatted by audio transcoding, and saved anywhere other than on a CD.

MP3 codec
With the advent of the LAME MP3 Encoder codec, the music industry experienced a real shock, because those files “weighed” dozens of times less than the same WAV file. Even a five minute compose at full compression rarely exceeds the size of 5-7MB. Agree, a significant advance, not to mention the fact, allowed not only to adjust the above characteristics, but also some additional parameters in the form of ID3 tags, which contained information, for example, about the artist, album name and tracks. , the release date.

This type has become the most popular. Look, almost the entire Internet is full of this universal format. In general, we can say that the MP3 audio format has become a true revolution in sound. It remains one of the most popular and in-demand so far, even though it is being replaced by other types of audio. But more on that later.

AIFF files
Audio formats have a different style. The so-called .aiff format was originally created for use on Macintosh computer systems.

Only much later did a transformation take place, which predetermined the compatibility of sound formats with their use on platforms of different operating systems.

OGG format
Music in audio.ogg format is also quite common. This standard was developed by Vorbis. However, it should be noted that it has a number of significant disadvantages. First of all, it is an unreasonable load on the computer’s system resources, despite the minimal size. Second, the use of your own codecs and decoders, which the system may not install automatically. For example, when working in the FL Studio Producer Edition (or XXL) program in versions prior to 9.xx, there was a folder with an installation file in .inf format, which had to be activated for installation after installing the main application manually. (Otherwise, presets in this format just won’t play.)

However, these types of audio formats are now found, and the sound itself looks great.