What are video codecs and audio codecs?
Almost any computer user periodically listens to music on it, which is stored electronically. There are many formats for storing music, each of them was developed for specific tasks:
Bit rate is the amount of information used during encoding for 1 second playback. The higher it is, the less the distortion and the sound matches the original as much as possible.
Lossless – Lossless audio encoding. By converting to lossless formats and vice versa, we get exactly the same sound.
Lossy: compression formats designed for the fact that a person simply cannot physically hear certain frequencies that are skipped during conversion. At the same time, it can significantly save the amount of disk space.
Audio CD
The format that ushered in the era of digital sound after the transition from vinyl records. It was adopted as a standard in 1979 by Philips and Sony. In the audio CD format, music can be physically stored only on optical media; when recording to a hard disk, the audio track must be converted.
Due to the highest sound quality and the ability to play on any player, the format is still very popular, even though it is quite old.
Flac
Perhaps the most common format for storing lossless music. Compared to other lossless audio compression codecs, flac developed by xiph.org is completely free and offers the smallest output file size.
MP3
The most popular music format accepted as an unofficial standard for any playback device. Its popularity is based on the fact that because it cuts frequencies inaudible to the ear with practically the same sound quality, an mp3 file is 30% of the original lossless file.
The first audio track in mp3 format appeared in 1994. One of the reasons for its popularity is the ability to store a variety of additional information on audio file tags and the convenience of organizing a music library.
Ogg
A new lossy format that was launched in 2002 as a free alternative to paid formats. Unlike its predecessors, mp3 in particular, it allows the possibility of multi-channel encoding and multi-channel audio storage. It is most used in video games.
The term “audio” today means everything that is somehow connected with sound. This is processing, playing, mixing and simply listening to audio recordings. Few people know that during their existence all popular audio formats have undergone significant changes, sometimes for the better and sometimes even for the worse.
The problem is that when the creators tried to improve the recording quality by using the new format, the size of the result increased significantly. Reducing the size of the final file resulted in a significant loss of quality. But this was not always the case.
The first mention of computer sound is associated with the creation of several primitive video games. Then the sound was played back using the speaker of the system. As the software developers of that time did not try, they failed to achieve the level of quality that would be compatible with tape and reel recorders. This is what got many developers thinking about how to change the audio format to make the sound more natural and natural. It is this problem that has led to the current competition in the audio market. As a result, the formats used strongly affect the quality of the reproduced material and the configuration of the basic playback parameters.
WAV format
The first full quality of audio formats is associated with this particular format. The WAV extension designation was derived from the English word “wave”, which means wave in Russian. It was this format that became the first audio format to be processed with computer programs at a highly professional level. Files with a WAV extension had the following characteristics:
– depth of sound;
– sampling frequency;
– bit rate, etc.
This format was even compatible with the sound that could be obtained after processing an audio CD with an equalizer and other tools. However, the file size in this case was completely unwarranted. For example, the most common 3 minute long track could be up to 50 megabytes long.
