Audio File Formats

TYPES OF AUDIO FORMAT

 Three major groups of audio file formats:

 Uncompressed audio formats, such as WAV, AIFF

and AU;
 formats with lossless compression, such as FLAC,
Monkey's Audio (filename extension APE), WavPack
(filename extension WV), Shorten, Tom's lossless
Audio Kompressor (TAK), TTA, ATRAC Advanced
Lossless, Apple Lossless and lossless Windows Media
Audio (WMA).
 formats with lossy compression, such as MP3,
Vorbis, Musepack, ATRAC, lossy Windows Media
Audio (WMA) and AAC.
 Uncompressed audio format

 There is one major uncompressed audio format,

PCM, which is usually stored as a .wav on Windows
or as .aiff on Mac OS.
 WAV is a flexible file format designed to store more
or less any combination of sampling rates or bitrates.
 This makes it an adequate file format for storing and
archiving an original recording.
 A lossless compressed format would require more
processing for the same time recorded, but would be
more efficient in terms of space used.
 Uncompressed audio format

 WAV, encodes all sounds, whether they are complex

sounds or absolute silence, with the same number of bits
per unit of time. E.g a file containing a minute of playing
by a symphonic orchestra would be the same size as a
minute of absolute silence if they were both stored in
WAV.
 If the files were encoded with a lossless compressed
audio format, the first file would be marginally smaller,
and the second file taking up almost no space at all.
However, to encode the files to a lossless format would
take significantly more time than encoding the files to
the WAV format.
 Recently some new lossless formats have been developed
(for example TAK), which aim is to achieve very fast
coding with good compression ratio.
 Lossless audio formats

 Lossless audio formats (such as the most widespread

FLAC, WavPack, Monkey's Audio) provide a
compression ratio of about 2:1.
 Lossy audio compression

 A lossy compression method is one where

compressing data and then decompressing it
retrieves data that may well be different from the
original, but is close enough to be useful in some
way.
 Lossy compression is most commonly used to
compress multimedia data (audio, video, still
images), especially in applications such as streaming
media and internet telephony.
 By contrast, lossless compression is required for text
and data files, such as bank records, text articles, etc.
 Lossy audio compression

 Lossy compression formats suffer from generation

loss: repeatedly compressing and decompressing the
file will cause it to progressively lose quality. This is
in contrast with lossless data compression.
 Free and open file formats
 wav – standard audio file container format used mainly in Windows
PCs. Commonly used for storing uncompressed (PCM), CD-quality
sound files, which means that they can be large in size — around
10 MB per minute. Wave files can also contain data encoded with a
variety of codecs to reduce the file size (for example the GSM or
mp3 codecs). Wav files use a RIFF structure.
 ogg – a free, open source container format supporting a variety of
codecs, the most popular of which is the audio codec Vorbis. Vorbis
offers compression similar to MP3 but is less popular.
 mpc - Musepack or MPC (formerly known as MPEGplus, MPEG+ or
MP+) is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for
transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180
kbit/s. Musepack and Ogg Vorbis are rated as the two best available
codecs for high-quality lossy audio compression in many double-
blind listening tests. Nevertheless, Musepack is even less popular
than Ogg Vorbis and nowadays is used mainly by the audiophiles.
 Free and open file formats

 flac – a lossless compression codec. This format is a lossless compression

as like zip but for audio. If you compress a PCM file to flac and then restore
it again it will be a perfect copy of the original. (All the other codecs
discussed here are lossy which means a small part of the quality is lost).
The cost of this losslessness is that the compression ratio is not good. Flac
is recommended for archiving PCM files where quality is important (e.g.
broadcast or music use).
 aiff – the standard audio file format used by Apple. It is like a wav file for
the Mac.
 raw – a raw file can contain audio in any codec but is usually used with
PCM audio data. It is rarely used except for technical tests.
 au – the standard audio file format used by Sun, Unix and Java. The audio
in au files can be PCM or compressed with the μ-law, a-μlaw or G729
codecs.
 mid - an industry-standard protocol that enables electronic musical
instruments, computers, and other equipment to communicate, control,
and synchronize with each other
 Open file formats

 gsm – designed for telephony use in Europe, gsm is a very practical format
for telephone quality voice. It makes a good compromise between file size
and quality. Note that wav files can also be encoded with the gsm codec.
 dct – A variable codec format designed for dictation. It has dictation header
information and can be encrypted (often required by medical
confidentiality laws).
 vox – the vox format most commonly uses the Dialogic ADPCM (Adaptive
Differential Pulse Code Modulation) codec. Similar to other ADPCM
formats, it compresses to 4-bits. Vox format files are similar to wave files
except that the vox files contain no information about the file itself so the
codec sample rate and number of channels must first be specified in order
to play a vox file.
 aac – the Advanced Audio Coding format is based on the MPEG2 and
MPEG4 standards. aac files are usually ADTS or ADIF containers.
 mp4/m4a – MPEG-4 audio most often AAC but sometimes MP2/MP3
 mmf - a Samsung audio format that play a music of ringtone
 Proprietary formats

 mp3 – the MPEG Layer-3 format is the most popular format for
downloading and storing music. By eliminating portions of the audio file
that are essentially inaudible, mp3 files are compressed to roughly one-
tenth the size of an equivalent PCM file while maintaining good audio
quality.
 wma – the popular Windows Media Audio format owned by Microsoft.
Designed with Digital Rights Management (DRM) abilities for copy
protection.
 atrac (.wav) – the older style Sony ATRAC format. It always has a .wav file
extension. To open these files simply install the ATRAC3 drivers.
 ra – a Real Audio format designed for streaming audio over the Internet.
The .ra format allows files to be stored in a self-contained fashion on a
computer, with all of the audio data contained inside the file itself.
 ram – a text file that contains a link to the Internet address where the Real
Audio file is stored. The .ram file contains no audio data itself.
 dss – Digital Speech Standard files are an Olympus proprietary format. It is
a fairly old and poor codec. Prefer gsm or mp3 where the recorder allows. It
allows additional data to be held in the file header.
 Proprietary formats

 msv – a Sony proprietary format for Memory Stick compressed

voice files.
 dvf – a Sony proprietary format for compressed voice files;
commonly used by Sony dictation recorders.
 ivs – A proprietary version with Digital Rights Management
developed by 3D Solar UK Ltd for use in music downloaded from
their Tronme Music Store and interactive music and video player.
 mp4 – A proprietary version of AAC in MP4 with Digital Rights
Management developed by Apple for use in music downloaded from
their iTunes Music Store.
 iklax – An iKlax Media proprietary format, the iKlax format is a
multi-track digital audio format allowing various actions on musical
data, for instance on mixing and volumes arrangements.
 mxp4 – a Musinaut proprietary format allowing play of different
versions (or skins) of the same song.