10 Common Audio Formats Compared: Choose the Right File Format for The Job

If you are casually listening to music, this is not an issue. However, if you work in the field of music production or if you are producing other media, then you will often come across a choice to decide which audio format you want to use for your audio production or other projects. There are a lot of different formats out there. Let us take a look at some of the common ones and take a look at their suitability for various applications. Prerequisites: Before you dig into audio formats, you will need to understand a few basics:
  • Sample rate – the number of audio samples per second, expressed in ‘Hz’
  • bitrate – the number of bits per second, expressed in ‘kbps’
  • lossy vs. lossless – lossy compression compromises audio quality to compress the file, lossless does not lose any quality

Comparing audio formats

MP3

This is probably the most common audio format. It stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. It is more than 2 decades old, yet still holds its popularity due to its unambiguity. It uses lossy compression and cuts out any sound that may be out of hearing range of most people. It can be played on basically any device that supports audio playback, however not an ideal choice for professional workflow due to loss of quality. It can still produce decent audio quality at a higher bitrate.

PCM

This is the standard uncompressed audio format. PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation. It contains just the digitized analog audio signals, as they are, without any sort of compression applies. The quality is completely dependent on the sample rate. This format retains the full quality of the recording and is most commonly used in the audio CD. However, it also creates very large files, which is why you see audio CDs with just 20-30 songs.

WAV

This format was developed by Microsoft and IBM in 1991. This is an audio container format that may contain an uncompressed or a compressed audio, though most often is used to store uncompressed audio. This is most common on Windows systems, though many other devices can play this format as well.

AIFF

This format was created by Apple as an equivalent to WAV on the Apple ecosystem. AIFF stands for Audio Interchange File Format. It is quite similar to WAV in that it is an audio container which may contain lossy or lossless audio, with the same extension. However, it is most commonly used to store lossless file. It is commonly used by Apple softwares such as Garage Band. Most Apple devices play this kind of file without problems. Windows computers can also play it with third-party software, but don’t expect all media players to support it.

AAC

This audio codec was developed as a successor to MP3. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding. It is still a lossy format, but it has a more advanced compression algorithm. When compared with MP3, it can achieve the same compression ratio while retaining better audio quality. Though it is not as popular as MP3, it is supported by most modern devices. It is also common for many streaming services such as YouTube.

FLAC

This is the most common lossless audio codec. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. It is free and open source codec for compressing audio without any loss of audio quality. It is commonly supported by most HiFi audio devices. It is also widely supported by most computers, with the notable exception of Apple devices.

ALAC

Apple developed its own equivalent of FLAC for lossless audio compression. ALAC stands for Apple Lossless Audio Codec. It went royalty free in 2011. It has slightly less efficient compression algorithm than FLAC. However, support beyond Apple devices is pretty thin.

APE

This is another lossless file format, but it has superior audio compression than both FLAC and ALAC. However, this comes at a cost of a more demanding decompression process. Thus, this format also has very few devices and softwares that support playback. Hence, the APE format has limited applicability.

OGG/Vorbis

In this format, the OGG is the file container and Vorbis is the codec. They are mentioned together since they are most commonly used together. Vorbis is a lossy compression codec and is also is free and open source. It was developed as a replacement for MP3, however, it remains quite obscure in popularity compared to MP3. Though OGG uses a more advanced compression algorithm than MP3.

WMA/WMA Lossless

This audio codec was developed by Microsoft as a successor to MP3. WMA stands for Windows Media Audio. Unsurprisingly, as with other planned successors to MP3, this also remains largely obscure, mostly limited to a few uses on Windows machines. There is also WMA Lossless codec which stores files with the same extension.

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