MAXIMUM SOUND QUALITY. LOSSLESS FORMAT

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MAXIMUM SOUND QUALITY. LOSSLESS FORMAT: WHAT IS IT? HIGH QUALITY MUSIC IN LOSSLESS FORMAT

Lossless Audio

Today there are about three dozen common digital audio formats. Why you need to create so many types of sound files to store one type of content and how to manage all this, you will learn from this material.

Lossless Audio

Surely many users prefer to use their home computer not only as a workhorse, but also as a multimedia center, where they can watch movies or family photos, as well as listen to their favorite music. Although compact digital players or mobile phones are certainly more suitable for listening to musical compositions, but unlike them, a computer can not only play music.

No matter how big the built-in memory of your music player is, it will most likely be difficult to store your entire music library on it. Additionally, using a PC, you can create, edit, organize, and search for music. Also, don’t forget that there are around three dozen common digital audio formats today, and most players are far from omnivorous and can only play a few of them.

So why do you need to create so many music formats to store one type of content? The point is that in the vast majority of cases the sound is stored in a “compressed” form, since one minute of uncompressed composition occupies about 10 MB on the hard disk. On the one hand, this seems not to be much, but on the other, if you are a music lover and your collection consists of several hundred or even thousands of songs, then it is clear that the sound must be compressed to reduce the space it takes up electronic media.

Various special algorithms are used to compress music files, which subsequently determine the structure and presentation of the audio data, or so-called digital audio file formats. All audio formats can be divided into three groups: uncompressed audio formats, lossless compression, and lossy compression.

NO COMPRESSION

One of the most widespread formats related to this type is the well-known WAV. The sound of files with this extension is stored without compression or changes. It is true that much more space is required to store uncompressed files and therefore WAV is more widely used only in professional audio and video applications, where the sound should not have a loss of quality before processing. Storing ordinary musical compositions in this form is an unwarranted waste.

To play WAV files, you do not need any special software, as all media players understand this format, including the standard Windows Media audio player built into the Windows system.

Another format used to store uncompressed audio that is worth mentioning is Apple’s development called AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format). As you may have guessed, it is most commonly used on Macintosh computers running Mac OS X.

LOSSLESS COMPRESSION (NO LOSS)

Lossless compression algorithms for audio files work on the principle of conventional file cabinets. They do not provide the highest level of compression (40 to 60%), while they have virtually no effect on sound quality. It is also worth noting that in this case, the encrypted data can be fully restored to its original form. Therefore, the use of lossless compression is most often used in cases where it is important to preserve the identity of the compressed data with respect to the original.

The most popular audio formats in this group are FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), APE (Monkey’s Audio), WMA (Windows Media Lossless), and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec). Each has its own pros and cons. For example, the APE codec offers slightly better compression gains, while FLAC is more common. In general, all true music lovers store their music collections in lossless formats, since they do not remove any data from the audio stream, and files created with these codecs can be listened to even on high-quality stereos.

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Lossless formats: flac, ape, wv, dts, and other digital audio formats

Lossless formats: flac, ape, wv, dts, and other digital audio formats

Free Lossless Audio Codec

Recently, in the open spaces of the Russian Internet, music in Lossless formats has been found more and more often, which can not fail to delight connoisseurs of free real quality. But sadly, files with the flac, ape, wv, dts permission cause a “RAM” stupor for a common user and he walks in search of his usual mp3. Well what can I say, Epic Fail, comrades?

lossless audio

This guide provides a detailed description of lossless formats and describes in detail how to read and write such files …

Theory: lossless formats

Lossless data compression is an information compression method, whereby encoded information can be retrieved with bit precision. This fully recovers the original data from the compressed state. This type of compression is diametrically different from lossy data compression. As a general rule, each type of digital information has its own lossless compression algorithms.

FLAC and APE codecs are the main Lossless formats today

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.

Monkey’s Audio (APE) is a popular lossless digital audio encoding format. It is distributed free of charge along with open source code and a suite of encoding and playback software, as well as plugins for popular players. Monkey’s audio files use the following extensions: .ape to store audio and .apl to store metadata. Despite being open source, Monkey’s Audio is not free, as its license imposes significant restrictions on its use.

After downloading music on Lossless, you can burn it to CD in the future and listen to it with Hi-Fi (or other) class acoustics, while normal CD quality will be.

For comparison, bitrate:

-mp3 ~ 320 kb / s

-FLAC and APE ~ 1000 kb / s

Theory:

SACD, DVD-Audio, DTS-CD and others multi-channel music formats.

SACD stands for Super Audio Compact Disc, an optical disc format for storing music. It looks like a normal CD, some discs can be seen with the naked eye: their working side is yellow. The sound in SACD is recorded in a completely different format: DSD (Direct Stream Digital) and they are reproduced only in special players.

features:

– Multichannel: 6 channels of audio can be recorded

– A completely different type of recording (DSD), which provides better sound quality compared to a CD.

– Conditional compatibility with older players: there can be two layers to a disc: normal CD (stereo) and one or two SACD variants (stereo / multichannel).

That is, if the disk:

Single Layer (“Single Layer”) – Read-only on SACD players.

Double Layer or “Hybrid” (“Double Layer” or “Hybrid”): Read on both conventional CD players and SACD players.

All SACDs have CD text – text information about album, artist, and track.

Lossless sound quality

Lossless sound quality

Lossless Audio

This group of formats records, encodes the sound in such a way that by decoding it it can be restored exactly.

Lossless Audio Compressor

The most popular lossless encoding formats are:

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)

APE (mono audio)

ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec)

Loss of sound quality (lossy)
Lossy compression modifies the sound. For example, frequencies inaudible to the human ear are eliminated. The decoded file will differ from the original in terms of the information recorded on it, but it will sound almost the same.

Popular lossy formats: MP3, WMA, OGG, AAC. [2]

Bit rate is the amount of information transmitted over a certain period of time. The essence of its principle is how much information we can dedicate to each second of the reproduction of our audio file. It is generally accepted to use Kbps (kilobits per second) or Mbps as units.

1. Constant Bit Rate Coding (CBR, Constant Bit Rate): An encoding mode in which the bit rate remains unchanged regardless of the nature of the music. The main task of the encoder in this case will be the need to obtain the highest possible file quality with a constant stream.
2. Average Bit Rate Coding (ABR, Average Bit Rate): intermediate coding mode between CBR and VBR. When encoding, the desired average bit rate is indicated. If necessary, the encoder can slightly increase or decrease the bit rate to achieve a higher quality / size ratio. The downside of ABR mode is the lower quality than VBR mode. The advantage is a more or less uniform flow and, as a result, an easily predictable file size.
3. Variable Bit Rate (VBR) Encoding – A mode of encoding in which the desired quality level is set at the encoder. When encoding, the codec chooses the bit rate required to compress each fragment of the recording, while the range of bit rates used can be very large. This mode allows you to achieve the highest quality / size ratio, but the size of the resulting file is often difficult to predict (for example, when compressing with musepack -normal, the average file bitrate can be 140 or 210). The disadvantage of VBR is the impossibility of using it for Internet broadcasts with a small channel width. [3]
SBR (Spectral Band Replication) is a technology that allows you to restore high frequencies using information contained in other regions of the spectrum and a small stream of additional data.

DRM (digital rights management) is a set of tools designed to protect a recording from illegal copies.

The digital audio format is a format for representing audio data used in digital audio recording, as well as for additional storage of recorded material on a computer and other electronic media, so-called audio media. [4]

An audio file (a file that contains a sound recording) is a computer file consisting of information about the amplitude and frequency of sound, saved for later playback on a computer or player.

The file format determines the structure and presentation characteristics of the audio data when stored on a PC storage device. To eliminate the redundancy of the audio data, audio codecs are used, with the help of which the audio data is compressed. There are three groups of audio file formats:

1.Uncompressed audio formats like WAV, AIFF
2.Lossless compressed audio formats (APE, FLAC)
3.audio formats using lossy compression (mp3, ogg)
Sound quality is a very subjective parameter and can vary greatly from person to person. If we are talking about the so-called music file encoding, when the audible differences between the original file and the file obtained by decoding a compressed audio file are not desirable, then it is assumed that the music will be played on Hi-Fi equipment (or even Hi-End) of high quality, and not at all. on computer speakers that cost $ 15-20. Modern codecs allow you to achieve the sound of an encoded file, which is indistinguishable to the ear from a CD, even with good equipment, with a compression ratio of about 1: 5. To listen to music every day on a computer, generally choose a higher audio compression ratio (up to 1:10 or even 1:20), as a result it is possible to create smaller files at the expense of lower quality. Subjectively, it may not change: in particular, ordinary computer speakers often introduce noticeably more distortion.

What are the advantages of the lossless audio format?

What are the advantages of the lossless audio format?

Lossless and Lossy Audio Files

The advantage of lossless for storing an audio collection is that the quality of the recordings is much higher than that of lossy codecs and they take up less space than uncompressed audio. It is true that lossy files are smaller than lossless music files. Most modern playback programs understand the lossless format. Programs that cannot play it can easily learn it using the lossless plugin. What are lossless audio formats?

Lossless audio

Lossless audio formats
A true music lover is unlikely to be satisfied with the sound of music recorded in Ogg Vorbis or MP3 compression formats. Of course, if you listen to audio recordings on home audio equipment, sound defects cannot be heard with your ear, but if you try to play a compressed file on high-quality Hi-Fi equipment, you will immediately find the sound defects. . Of course, creating a collection of quality music on CD or vinyl is not easy. There is a reasonable alternative to this path for lovers of high-quality sound – lossless music. It can be stored on a PC in a way that allows you to keep your music’s original settings unchanged, even if compression is applied. In this way it simultaneously solves the problems of high-quality music and its compact storage, since audio equipment for listening (headphones, speakers, amplifiers) is quite affordable.

Uncompressed lossless audio formats:

CDDA is an audio CD standard;
WAV: Microsoft Wave;
IFF-8SVX;
IFF-16SV;
AIFF;
Compressed formats:

FLAC;
APE – Monkey’s Audio;
M4A – Apple Lossless – Apple’s high-quality music format;
WV – WavPack;
WMA: Windows Media Audio 9;
TTA – True Audio.

FLAC format
The most common format is the. It differs from lossy audio codecs in that no data is removed from the audio stream when it is used. This makes it possible to use it successfully to play music on Hi-Fi and Hi-End equipment, as well as to create an archive from a collection of audio recordings.

The great advantage of the format is its free distribution. This is important for musicians who record music on their own. The format has gained a lot of popularity recently, thanks to which its support is included in the vast majority of multimedia players.

APE format
Unlike FLAC, for the APE format there are only codecs and plugins for the Windows platform. For other platforms, there are expensive third-party software solutions. The algorithm is capable of achieving lossless compression of audio information between 1.5 and 2 times. It includes three main stages of encoding, of which only one is based on the use of inherent properties of sound for compression. The rest are similar to conventional filing cabinets. Even though the compression algorithm is distributed free of charge, the licensing restrictions are such that it is practically inaccessible to amateur musicians.

Apple Lossless Format
You can listen to high-quality lossless music using the audio compression codec without sacrificing Apple quality. This format was developed by Apple for use on its own devices. The format is compatible with iPods with special dock connectors and the latest firmware. The format does not use specific rights management (DRM) tools, but the container format contains such capabilities. It also supports QuickTime and is included as a feature in iTunes.

The format is part of the free access libraries, which allows you to organize listening to files in Windows applications. In 2011, Apple released the source codes for the format, opening up broad prospects for the codec. In the future, it can seriously compete with other formats. The tests yielded good results. Compressed files vary in size between 40-60% of the originals. The decoding speed is also impressive, which justifies its use for mobile devices, whose performance is not high.

One of the disadvantages of the codec is that the extension of the audio files matches the audio codec, leading to confusion because AAC is not a high-quality music format. Therefore, it was decided to store the data in an MP4 container with the extension .m4a.

What does a lossless audio format do?

What does a lossless audio format do?

lossless audio

You may think that the word “lossless” is used for audio formats that don’t use compression at all. However, even lossless audio formats use compression to keep file sizes at an acceptable level.

LOSSLESS AUDIO

Lossless formats use compression algorithms that preserve the audio data, so the sound is exactly the same as the original source. This is in contrast to lossy audio formats like AAC, MP3, and WMA, which compress audio using algorithms that discard data. Audio files are made up of sound and silence. Lossless formats are capable of compressing pause to almost zero while retaining all audio data, making it smaller than uncompressed files.

What lossless formats are commonly used for digital music?
Examples of popular lossless formats used to store music:

FLAC
Wav
A THE C
Lossless WMA
Impact of Lossless Formats on Music Quality
If you download a lossless music track from an HD music service, you expect the sound to be really high quality. On the other hand, if you convert low-quality music tapes by digitizing them using lossless audio formats, the sound quality will not improve.

Is it possible to convert a lossy song to a lossless song?
It is never a good idea to go from one loss to another. This is because a song that has already been compressed in a lossy format will always be like this. If you convert it to a lossless format, all you get is wasted space on your hard drive or mobile device. You cannot improve the quality of a lossy song using this method.

Benefits of Using a Lossless Audio Format for Your Music Library
Using a lossy format like MP3 is still the most common method of storing your music collection. However, there are clear benefits to creating a lossless music library.

Perfect Music CD Backup: Lossless copy of audio files gives you a slightly exact copy of the original music CD. This means that no matter what audio formats come in the future, you will know that you have a perfect copy of the original.
Recover from loss or damage. Having music in lossless format allows you to restore a damaged original CD or any lost CD to a blank CD.
Convert to any format. Since your music is in a lossless format, you can convert it to any format and get the best quality it can support.

Disadvantages of storing your music in lossless format
Not as compatible: Compared to formats like MP3, lossless formats are not as compatible with hardware devices like smartphones and tablets.
It requires more storage space. Lossless audio files generally require more storage space than lossy encoded files.

Lossless audio formats

Lossless audio formats

Lossless audio

Audio files can be converted in a more or less space saving way using lossless or lossy codecs. While the data reduction is absolutely true to the original with lossless codecs, a difference can be heard from the original material, especially with heavy compression with lossy codecs.

Lossless compressed audio files lose approximately 25% to 50% of their original file size. Typical representatives are Monkey’s Audio, FLAC, or WavPack. Modern lossy codecs like AAC, Ogg Vorbis, or MP3, on the other hand, reduce source material by 90% without sounding noticeably worse.

Lossless audio compression

Unlike documents or images, for example, audio files are very difficult to compress, since identical repetitions are very rare in music. But it is precisely on such occurrences that the Huffmann or Lempel-Ziv algorithms depend, which are used in ZIP or RAR, for example. Therefore, most non-clustered compressors employ predictive coding. The signal is divided into a music component and a noise component. Depending on how well this prediction has been made, the noise component should ideally be Gaussian white noise that can be easily compressed using conventional methods.
In the ideal case, the result is 50% compression, which is highly dependent on the piece of music.

Monkey’s Audio, FLAC and WavPack are popular formats for lossless compression of WAV (PCM) files, for example digitized original recordings from the recording studio (for archiving or later processing) or archiving copies of music CDs. The sound quality is always the same as the original and the checksums reveal corrupted files. Increasing hard drive capacity at affordable prices makes “Lossless Codecs” interesting for everyday use.

Uncompressed: WAV (PCM)

WAV is the largest common denominator of Windows audio formats. The Macintosh equivalent is called AIFF. WAV is actually the collective term for various subformats, of which PCM is the most common and is generally equated with WAV.

WAV (PCM) is an uncompressed recording of sound samples: the time signal of a noise is sampled, quantized, digitized, and saved at discrete points in time. The more often and finer you record these values, the better the sound. With CD quality music, this instantaneous value is recorded 44,100 times per second and recorded with 16-bit “precision”, that is, 2 ^ 16 = 65536 possible values.

With the help of special programs (eg CDex, EAC, Audiograbber), Audio CDs can be transferred to the hard disk as WAV (PCM) files. Viewed in this way, WAV (PCM) files are copies of the original, provided the CD-ROM drive is not read incorrectly or the CD is damaged. One minute at CD quality requires roughly 10MB of storage space, which is not as happy to give away even in the age of ever-larger hard drives.

On the PC, WAV (PCM) and CD-quality (44.1 kHz, 16-bit, stereo) audio files are often the starting material for creating space-saving audio files in formats such as MP3. However, for sound processing on the home PC, WAV (PCM) is the first choice.

Monkey’s Audio

Monkey’s Audio is a lossless audio codec for PCM wave files. Monkey’s Audio comes with a convenient program interface (in English), over which files can be compressed, decompressed, verified or tagged. PCM wave files (any sample rate, 8/16/24 bit, mono or stereo) or corresponding Shorten or WavPack files are accepted as source files. Monkey’s Audio does not support multiple channels.

The APE tags that are used to store the title information can be supplemented with their own fields and are therefore very flexible. They are now used in conjunction with other audio formats as well.

The included command line encoder allows integration into other programs. Various audio players support the format through plugins. A plug-in for Winamp can be installed at the same time as installation. Monkey’s Audio is a Windows program by default. However, there is a platform independent version of Java.

FLAC

FLAC stands for “Free Lossless Audio Codec”. There are several lossless audio codecs available. FLAC is suitable here for several reasons: FLAC follows the open source philosophy (free open source code, available for many operating systems), works very fast, has a good and secure framework structure.

5 reasons to choose lossless audio: Flac, WAV, AIFF

MP3 versus FLAC

There are several formats you can choose from when you want to rip your CDs. MP3 is the most popular format, while FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a lesser known alternative. The main difference between the two is the way they compress the audio information. Mp3 is a lossy format in which parts of the audio information are people probably won’t hear it, it gets thrown away. On the other hand, as the name suggests, FLAC is lossless, which means that it would keep all the information about the audio and nothing would be thrown away.

LossLess Audio

The biggest consequence of the lossy / lossless difference is the magnitude of the corresponding size. While both are significantly smaller than uncompressed audio, MP3 files will likely be about 20% larger than their equivalent FLAC files. is very important on portable devices where space is often a big issue. FLAC advantage nothing is lost no matter how many times you compress and unzip the file. With MP3, the sound quality would deteriorate due to the way the algorithm works.

LossLess Audio

The small MP3 file size is also one of the main factors why it has become so popular. It was the codec of choice when the first SSD music players appeared; dubbed as MP3 players. Even today, MP3 is still very popular and almost all devices that can play digital music can recognize and play MP3 files. With FLAC, the number of devices capable of playing FLAC files is very small. The ability to play FLAC files can often only be seen on high-end devices, where the sound quality can really be appreciated.

Another aspect in which the two formats differ is royalties. Although MP3 is widely used, few know that it is a proprietary format and that royalties are required to use this format. However, people don’t have to worry because it is the device manufacturer who pays the royalties for using the MP3 format. FLAC is royalty-free software that anyone can use without paying for it. The author intended it to be free from the start.

Resume:

1. MP3 is a lossy encoding algorithm while FLAC is a lossless encoding algorithm

2 is. MP3 files are probably 20% the size of the same FLAC-encoded file

3. MP3 has a broader hardware support compared to FLAC

4. MP3 is a proprietary format, while FLAC is not copyrighted.

FLAC, WAV, MP3, DSD, ALAC … What audio format should I use?

You probably know the famous MP3 audio format. There’s even a good chance that you only use it on a daily basis. But did you know that it is possible to take your music to the next level thanks to other audio formats? If the terms FLAC, DSD, sample rate, or even lossless don’t mean anything to you, then you’ve come to the right place. Designed specifically for newbies, this guide tells you everything you need to know about the basics of digital audio.

soundwave

FLAC, DSD, ALAC … Listening to a debate between audiophiles can seem difficult when you do not know this universe and the many acronyms that refer to it. But if you try the adventure, you will not regret it. Say goodbye to your boring and lifeless MP3s and hello to quality music. Trust us, your ears will thank you!

Sample Rate and Bit Depth: The Basics of Digital Music

Before knocking you out (we promise we won’t hit too hard) with barbaric acronyms in every way, let’s first focus on two essential notions of modern audio, namely sampling rate and bit depth. These two elements give an idea of the recording precision of a song.

but depth

As you know, computers run on bits, which are sets of 0 and 1. During a passage in the studio, music produced by an artist must be digitized, therefore transformed into 0 and 1 in order to be recorded on CD or transmitted to through transmission services. This is where the sampling rate and bit depth come into play.

Take the example of a CD. Our beloved empanadas are recorded in 16-bit / 44.1 kHz. The 44.1 kHz sampling rate means that the music produced by our musician is analyzed 44,100 times per second by studio recording devices. As for the bit depth, it gives an indication of the number of information recorded during this same period. The greater the depth, the more information will be encoded at the end.

However, CD quality is not the best in the world, even if it far exceeds MP3. Thus, we find 24-bit / 192 kHz recordings. The DSD goes even further with a frequency that rises to several MHz. But for simplicity, just remember that the higher the values described above, the more accurate the recording will be in your sound reproduction.

Lossy formats: MP3, AAC, OGG

In general, there are two types of formats in the audio world: lossy, lossy in English, and lossy, or lossless. If you want the best audio quality, stay away from compressed formats.

The best known of all is MP3. True dinosaur in the audio world, this type of file was developed at a time when the capacities of our hard drives were determined in MB and not in TB. Therefore, we had to compress the recordings as much as possible, even if that meant putting quality aside.

It is true that MP3 encoded music weighs only a few megabytes. But the applied algorithm is very aggressive, it simply cuts the frequencies considered inaudible by the human ear. In fact, MP3 loses many audible parts. To get an idea, click the link below, you will hear these famous truncated parts. The pieces seem flat, devoid of life. Listening can even become unpleasant after several tens of minutes. Suffice it to say that, apart from its small size, MP3 is no longer really interesting in our time if we are looking for quality music.

To make things better, Apple, meanwhile, released another audio format, AAC, for advanced audio encoding. This is also a lossy format which therefore loses details during data compression. However, the algorithm used is more efficient, cutting fewer important frequencies, at least on paper. In absolute terms, the difference from MP3 is not necessarily stark and the debate has been raging for years in the audiophile environment to find out if the AAC format is really better than MP3.

Finally, there is also the OGG Vorbis, another lossy compressed format. Like AAC, it is supposed to work better than MP3. This is the type of file Spotify uses. Her interest is to enable efficient transmission while reducing quality. However, the songs encoded in this format are not fabulous. The ideal is really to become lossless.

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.