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What are the advantages of WAV vs. MP3?

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What are the advantages of WAV vs. MP3?

Wave is an uncompressed or lossless format, while MP3 is compressed or lossy. Technically .wav is just a container format and can contain various types of compressed or uncompressed audio, but normally you will see that it contains uncompressed LPCM audio (same as on audio CDs). With .wav files, you essentially get a raw bitstream representation of the audio signal in digital form. An analog sound produced in the real world essentially contains an infinite amount of information because it is a constantly changing wave (see below). To bring these sounds into the digital domain, you need to sample the signal at various intervals to approximate the sound. For .wav, the audio signal is generally sampled at 44,100 times per second or more, and each sampled value is recorded so that the sound wave can be played:

MP3 files are compressed to compress the same audio information into a smaller file size. The .wav format is ideal for very faithful representations of the analog signal, but as you probably know, that usually costs larger files. Compressed audio (and video in a similar way) is designed to reduce file size while maintaining a respectable level of fidelity. In simple terms, compression tries to remove unnecessary data from the stream and reduce the signal to its most necessary components. With MP3, compression and encoding algorithms use a model of how we listen to analyze audio in the frequency domain and remove any unnecessary information. For example, due to auditory masking if there are two sounds at close frequencies, we will often only hear the loudest if the volume difference between the two is significant. So for MP3, the lower volume sound could be ruled out and the audio would sound essentially the same to our ears. Learn more about the technical side of MP3 encoding here.

In practice, both .wav and MP3 have their uses. For production, .wav is the standard because it will almost always be a 100% accurate, bit-by-bit reproduction of the source material. MP3s can be a decent alternative at high enough bit rates. Bitrate is a measure of how many bits per second MP3 encoding will use, which means that the higher the bitrate, the closer the MP3 will be to the original uncompressed stream. Bit rate is generally measured in kilobits per second (kbps). I like the high audio quality for my digital music collection, so when I have a choice, I generally encode MP3 at constant 256 or 320 kbps. That’s the upper end of what MP3s are capable of, and unfortunately a lot of digital music isn’t encoded that high. When the bit rate drops, it can generally be heard first at the high frequencies, for example, the cymbals of a drum kit will sound. 160kbps is tolerable, but somewhat lower than that and you will really start to notice it. But then again, with a high enough bitrate, the differences between MP3 and .wav are barely distinguishable, especially for an untrained listener (most listeners).

For .wav files, we mainly look at the bit depth and the sample rate. Bit depth is the number of bits used to encode each sampled value. The sampling rate indicates how many times per second the audio is sampled. CD (.wav) and MP3 are encoded at a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz (Hertz means “cycles per second”). Newer computers and audio hardware / software are now accommodating higher sample rates, including 48kHz or 96kHz. For .wav, the bit depth is usually 16 bit or 24 bit on newer systems. For most purposes, when using .wav, 16-bit, and 44.1kHz is sufficient, but if you have the capabilities, it’s generally worth upgrading to 24-bit, 48kHz.

Some sample file sizes for a five-minute stereo recording:

.wav, 16 bit, 44.1kHz: 50 MB
.wav, 24 bit, 48 kHz: 82 MB
.wav, 24 bit, 96 kHz: 164 MB
MP3, 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz: 4.5 MB
MP3, 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz: 7 MB
MP3, 320 kbps, 44.1 kHz: 11 MB
FLAC, 24-bit, 44.1 kHz: 28 MB
FLAC, 24 bit, 48 kHz: 31 MB
FLAC, 24 bit, 96 kHz: 61 MB

There is also a variable bit rate option for MP3 encoding, which should offer slightly smaller file sizes for the same quality. It uses a coding scheme that changes (varies) the bit rate for different parts of the song depending on the complexity and how many samples would be needed to faithfully recreate a given section.

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All about the mp3

Beyond a simple audio compression format, MP3 is the most widespread sound standard: there is currently no device that boasts of being “multimedia” that does not support the reproduction of these files.

Although for some it seems somewhat modern, the MP3 format has a lot of development time. It all started in the early 1990s, thanks to a group of European programmers who wanted to perform an effective audio compression algorithm, which would save storage space while maintaining a similar quality. Beyond the use that we can give to place more songs on the same CD or DVD, this saving in space is very important for digital communications. Indeed, one of the first uses that MP3 and their predecessors had was in radio networks and modem music transmissions.

So, basically, we can say that MP3 is a compression format of music files (and audio in general) that occupies neither more nor less than one tenth of what the same song weighs on a conventional audio CD. And the best part is that the sound quality is practically the same.

How does it work?

Those who developed the MP3 were based on psychoacoustics, which is a science that aims to analyze how human beings perceive sounds. On the basis of an intensive study of this concept, everything “unhelpful” can be eliminated and space saved without a common human being finding any difference from the original information. One of the main secrets of MP3 is that in its data it eliminates all frequencies not audible by the human (that is, more serious or more acute than what we can hear), so the only ones that are able to perceive any difference are our pets.

Another interesting feature of MP3 is variable bitrate. The bitrate is the amount of information bits that are transmitted in a second of audio: if it is larger, the sound will have a better resolution and will be more faithful to the original. For example, the standard for MP3 is 128 kbps (1 MB per minute), although there are many who use one of 192 or 256 kbps to improve fidelity. Placing a variable bitrate allows us to prioritize quality in those parts of “dynamic sound” and save in those that do not need more quality. However, since this variable bitrate technique depends a lot on the program with which the information is compressed, and is not always completely faithful, it is usually customary to use a fixed one.

Play MP3 on PC

There is an infinity of software to play music in MP3 format on our computer. Several of them are excellent, but there are certainly two that are much more popular than the rest. Why? One, for being one of the first and most classic, and the other, for being included in Windows and offering good benefits to the user: Winamp and Windows Media Player.

Initially, Winamp (www.winamp.com) was characterized as a very small and beautiful program, one of the first to use skins to change its appearance. Today, he only has the beauty, since his predefined window is much larger and more complete. However, it maintains a modular design that allows us to close each section as it suits us, to make the program more compact.

For several years, Microsoft has the desire to own the most used multimedia player in the world, and possibly has achieved it thanks to its integration into its system

Windows operating from the XP version. Beyond the differences that may be in the interface, with Windows Media Player we can do almost the same as with Winamp.

Which is better? That depends on each user in particular, although there are more followers of Winamp, especially because of the large number of interesting additions it has to improve the sound and listen to online radios through ShoutCast.

CD to MP3

Now that we know how to play MP3 music, the following question arises: how do we get MP3 files? There are many ways, such as downloading music directly from the internet (provided this distribution method is legal), or generate MP3 recording something with the microphone of our PC. But the most used is still the transfer of an audio CD to music in MP3 format. While there are several programs

Is the mp3 officially declared dead?

What audio formats govern in 2019?

At the end of last month, the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, a German organization specializing in the development of applications and technologies, announced that the Technicolor mp3 licensing program “for certain related mp3 patents and Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS software has been finished”. In other words: the creator of the audio format that ruled the world at the end of the nineties and the beginning of the new century gave him, with these words, the last nail to the coffin of the mp3.

“We thank all our licensees for their great support in converting mp3 into the defacto audio format in the world, during the last two decades.”

The IIS recognizes that although there are currently more efficient audio codecs with advanced features, the mp3 is still very popular. However, most video and audio streaming services use “modern ISO-MPEG codecs such as the AAC family or in the future MPEG-H. Those can deliver more features and higher audio quality at much lower bitrates compared to mp3 ”.

The format was the protagonist of the change of the business model of the music industry, when digital technologies and the Internet began to facilitate the sharing of music. Buying a CD and compressing it in mp3 format to store the music on other media (recordable CDs, basically) and thus starting a process of hand-to-hand transmission of albums and discographies became daily bread (access to broadband and email capabilities at the end of the last century complicated making this diffusion through virtual media).

The AAC or Advanced Audio Coding is the format used in applications and services such as Apple Music and is capable of providing high quality audio without requiring large amounts of information. This algorithm exploits two strategies for this: it discards from the audio what is not perceptible to the human ear and eliminates the redundant signals in the coding (remember that this, like the mp3 and other streaming formats is a method of music compression, therefore it constitutes an interpretation of an audio originally edited in formats such as FLAC or Free Lossless Audio Codec, another digital compression format that, unlike its other pairs, does not register any loss in the quality of the compressed audio).

However, Spotify, the paid streaming service that reigns in the world with 100 million subscribers (although Soundcloud has a total of 175 million users), uses another format, the Ogg Vorbis (OGG), which in premium quality grants audios to 320 kbps (in the desktop version of the application, because in its mobile version they only reach half the quality).

Deezer, a competitor of Spotify, on the other hand, offers an Elite service, with audio streaming in FLAC format (16-bit, at 1,411 kbps) at twice the premium subscription of its rival.

As you can imagine, at better quality, larger files, mass consumption of memory and storage. Perhaps this was not the strength of the mp3: to offer a decent audio format, depending on the codec and the player, without requiring the use of too much information (although the flatness of its compression and the metallization of the organic sounds that the conversion to mp3 meant I had nothing lovely about it). Anyway, today is official: the king is dead, long live the king.