How sound is stored on a computer
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.
First audio format used in computer games
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, it was impossible 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
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.
CD
Audio CDs, or more precisely the .cda extension, appeared around the same time as the wav format. But unlike files with the wav extension, .cda cannot be edited. But it can be opened in any audio processing software, transcoded and formatted, and saved to your hard drive. Of course, you will not be able to save your changes to a CD.
MP3 codec
After the introduction of the LAME MP3 Encoder codec in the music industry, there was a real revolution in the audio world. Now the audio files are ten times smaller. At maximum compression, the size of a five minute composition rarely exceeds 7MB. This was a significant advance. Also, this extension finally implemented the ability to tweak some features and configure additional parameters, such as ID3 tags. They can contain information about the track title, artist, album, and release date.
Of course, this format immediately became widespread. Almost the entire Internet community uses this universal format. So we can say that the MP3 format has revolutionized the field of computer sound. Today it is one of the most demanded and popular audio formats. Although today it is already being replaced by other audio formats. But we will talk about this a bit later.
AIFF files
There are other types of audio files. This is the so-called aiff format. This format was originally created for use on Macintosh computers. A little later, a transformation occurred, as a result of which it was possible to achieve the compatibility of various audio formats and the possibility of their use on different platforms and operating systems.
OGG format
This audio format is also quite common. It was developed by the specialists of the Vorbis company. Please note that this format has several disadvantages. First of all, despite the small size of the files, using this format places a heavy load on the computer’s system resources.
Also, to work with this audio format, you must use your own decoders and codecs, which may not be installed automatically. For example, those who worked with the FL Studio Producer Edition program had to manually activate the installation file in .inf format to work with this format. Otherwise this app just won’t play OGG files. Despite all these shortcomings, OGG audio files are quite common nowadays and they sound good.
Let’s take a look at another audio file format: AMR. It can be safely attributed to low-quality audio formats.
