Archive for the ‘Files’ tag
Music Files Formats
The music trend today is along the line of compressing music files such that these files would not be too large for disks and other storage devices to accommodate. In this manner, more music can be stored in a certain space. In order to do this, the music should be converted into an audio file format, which is the file format used for storing audio on a computer. The usual form of this audio format is a container format with defined storage layer.
In storing digital audio, the audio voltage which corresponds to a certain level of signal on playback, is sampled. The number of bits per sample determines the sample rate of the audio file; while the sample is the data which can be stored in an uncompressed or compressed form.
However, not all music files are compressed. In fact, there are generally three types of audio file formats, and these are the uncompressed audio file formats, formats with lossy compression, and formats with lossless compression. Each of these file format types has distinctive characteristics, and represented by various groups of these specific formats. For example, the uncompressed audio formats are identified as WAV, AU, or PCM among others. Correspondingly, formats with lossy compression include MP3, Vorbis, and Musepack. Formats with lossless compression include Monkey’s Audio, Shorten, and FLAC.
