Description of the main audio formats
In the world of music there are a large number of music formats, their modifications and versions, created by the giants of the music industry and small companies that have received public recognition in the electronic world.
Various physical methods have been developed to store audio data for these purposes, such as vinyl records, magnetic tape, CD, DAT, MD (minidisc), DVD, or converting music scores to music (MIDI), in the same way that they have many different computing methods emerged. audio data storage – digital: OGG, Mp3, Flac, Wav formats.
It is impossible to consider and discuss all audio formats, codecs, their advantages and disadvantages, so in my article I will try to tell you about the most popular audio file extensions that you find.
Why can’t we use any universal audio file encoding format? Because implementing multiple functions requires a different format. For example: to play CDs in a CD-ROM drive, to record music or sound effects in video games, to record a movie track or video clip, to play on mobile phones or to transfer files over the Internet, in addition, there are various operating systems that are the most widely used in the world … These include: Amiga, Macintosh, NEXT, and Windows PC.
Also, the work of a dj, sound engineer, cj, video engineer, or a simple music lover is quite different in nature. This may require that your audio data be saved in your own way. For example, the audio of a CD must be saved using 16 bits and a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz. However, to download sound over the Internet, we’d better use a different bit depth and sample rate, as each minute of 16-bit, 44-kilohertz audio takes up about 10MB, i.e. an average track of 5 minutes will be 50 meters, too much data for the average user. This article provides an overview of the most popular music formats.
AA (Audible Audio Book File) is a proprietary format developed by Audible. It is used to record audiobooks sold through the Audible and iTunes services. It is possible to reduce or accelerate the speed of listening to files: digital tone, the ability to leave bookmarks when listening to audio books, file protection, when delivering sound recordings over the Internet.
AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is an audio file format with less quality loss when encoding than MP3 in the same sizes. Lossless music encoding of original quality using the ALAC profile. AAC is a family of MPEG4 audio coding algorithms. Unlike the hybrid mp3 filter bank, AAC uses MDST (Modified Cosine Transform) technology, which means that the listener gets better sound quality than MP3 encoding with the same or lower bit rate. Possible AAC file extensions: [.m4a], [.m4b], [.m4p].
Additionally, AAC is a wideband audio coding algorithm that uses two basic coding principles to dramatically reduce the amount of data required to transmit high-quality digital audio. This format is one of the highest quality, uses lossy compression, compatible with most modern equipment, including notebooks.
For 2009, it is much less common than MP3 and other workarounds. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) was originally created as a successor to MP3 with improved encoding quality. The AAC format, officially known as ISO / IEC 13818-7, was released in 1997 as the new seventh part of the MPEG-2 family. There is also the AAC format known as MPEG-4 Part 3.
Benefits of AAC over MP3:
– up to 48 audio channels;
– high coding efficiency with constant and variable bit rate;
– sampling frequencies from 8 Hz to 96 kHz (MP3: 8 Hz – 48 kHz);
– More flexible set stereo mode.
ADX is a proprietary ADICM-based lossy compression and storage format developed by CRI Middleware specifically for use in video games. The most characteristic feature is the ability to repeat the sound recording, which makes using the format convenient to use as background music in various games that support this media container. It is compatible with many SEGA Dreamcast games, some PlayStation 2 games and GameCube.
Unlike MP3, it does not use the psychoacoustic model of reducing the volume of sound data (reducing its complexity). Instead, the ADPCM model uses a prediction function relative error data record to store samples.
