Audio file format

An audio file format is a file format for storing audio data on a computer system. There are many file formats for storing audio files.

It's important to distinguish file format and codec, even though most audio file formats support only one audio codec.

As of 2002, one of the most popular audio file formats was MP3, which uses the MPEG audio layer 3 codec to provide acceptable lossy compression for music files.

There are many newer audio formats and codecs, claiming to achieve improved compression and quality vs. MP3. Ogg Vorbis is an unpatented, free codec. Microsoft has its Windows Media Audio format.

Lossless compression of sound is not nearly as widely used outside of professional applications, as lossy compression can provide a much greater data compression ratio, with nearly the same apparent quality.

There are many uncompressed data formats, most popular of them being WAV, which is a flexible file format designed to store multiple types of audio data. It is a good file format for storing and archiving the original recording. The WAV format is based on the RIFF file format which is similar to the AIFF and IFF formats.

BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) is a standard audio format created by the European Broadcasting Union as a successor to WAV. BWF allows to store metadata in the file. See: European Broadcasting Union: Specification of the Broadcast Wave Format - A format for audio data files in broadcasting. EBU Technical document 3285, July 1997.

iTunes file format: AAC. http://www.apple.com/itunes/import.html

See also: audio compression QuickTime