AUDIO COMPRESSION STANDARDS & FORMATS

MP3: MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding
format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage,
as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on
digital audio players.

MP3 is an audio-specific format that was designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group.

The use in MP3 of a lossy compression algorithm is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data
required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original
uncompressed audio for most listeners.

Several bit rates are specified in the MPEG-1 Audio Layer III standard: 64, 128, 160, 256 and 320 kbit/s,
and the available sampling frequencies are 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz. The rate of 128 kbit/s at the sample rate
of 44.1 kHz is the most common, offering adequate audio quality in around 1/10th the size of CD file.

An MP3 file can also be constructed at higher or lower bit rates, with higher or lower resulting quality.

The compression works by reducing accuracy of certain parts of sound that are deemed beyond the
auditory resolution ability of most people.

WAVE: WAVE or .WAV, short for Waveform Audio File Format is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format
standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs.

It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio which means
that all the data is available at large file sizes.

Though a WAV file can hold compressed audio, the most common WAV format contains uncompressed
lossless audio in the linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) format.

WAV is compatible with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems.

CD-AUDIO: Red Book is the standard for audio CDs (Compact Disc Digital Audio system or CD-DA).

The first edition of the Red Book was released in 1980 by Philips and Sony.

It provides upto 80 minutes of uncompressed high quality stereo music captured at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz in
LPCM format.

The format extension is .cda

WINDOWS MEDIA AUDIO: Windows Media Audio (WMA) is an audio data compression technology
developed by Microsoft.

It is a proprietary technology which can compress files at a higher rate than MP3

Windows Media uses .wma as its extension.

WMA codec comes in 2 variants. The standard variant is a lossy format while the other variant is a
lossless format which provides the ultimate sound quality at lesser bitrates and file-sizes than WAV.

APPLE LOSSLESS: Apple Lossless also known as Apple Lossless Encoder (ALE) is an audio codec
developed by Apple Inc. for lossless data compression of digital music.

Apple Lossless data is stored with the filename extension .m4a

Audio files compressed will use up about half the storage space that the uncompressed data would
require. Also the decoding speed of music is very high.

It is a component of QuickTime Player and is mostly preferred for use on IPOD's.

AAC: Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for
digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound
quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.

AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications.

AAC is also the default or standard audio format for: Apple's iPhone, iPod, iPad, iTunes etc

The filename extension of this format is .aac

REAL AUDIO: Real Audio is a lossy, proprietary audio format developed by Real Networks.

It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup
modems, to high-fidelity formats for music.

It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is played at the same time as it is downloaded. In
the past, many internet radio stations used RealAudio to stream their programming over the internet in
real time.

Real Audio files were originally identified by a filename extension of .ra (for Real Audio). The official
player for Real Media content is Real Network's 'RealPlayer'.
VORBIS: Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation.

The project produces an audio format specification and codec for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is
most commonly used in conjunction with the .ogg format and it is therefore often referred to as Ogg
Vorbis.

Vorbis is patent-free and has free and open-source implementations and therefore is free to use,
implement, or modify as one sees fit, yet produces smaller files than most other codecs at equivalent or
higher quality.

AU: This is a simple audio file format introduced by Sun Microsystems.

It was common on NEXT systems and early web pages.

The .au format now supports many audio encoding formats.

It became a de-facto standard for UNIX sound.