All Audio Formats don’t play the same tone

Different Audio formats and details audio formats comparison

There are several audio formats in which music can be downloaded onto your iPhone or any other mobile phone but have you ever wondered what the difference between these audio formats is?

Do you take time to think which format you want to enjoy music in or just download whatever works and is handy? I mean I never take the time to convert music, MP3 is supported on my Samsung Monte and I just download it and play.

A few days back, one of my friends questioned me about different audio formats and asked me to blog a detailed audio formats comparison so here we go.

There are 4 major audio formats I would like to cover today in this post.

Waveform Audio (.wav)

Waveform audio format (.wav) is one of the oldest audio formats developed for PC. It was developed by IBM and Waveform Audio (.wav) describes a lossless audio encoding which suggest that no data is lost while playing and replaying of the recorded audio.

High quality Music CDs, professional Audio CDs are recorded in Waveform Audio Format (.wav). Nearly 7-10 songs in Waveform Audio (.wav) can be stored in a regular CD (700MB).

This is the truest form of recorded audio because every other format is bound to compress the whole thing. It reduces the file size of the piece to reduce storage required. This process is known as Compression.

Haven’t you ever felt the difference between a song in 320Kbps and the same song in 56Kbps? The term (kbps) simply signifies the amount of data converted into digital music per second. You speaker converts the data so the more data it receives per second, the better your songs sound.

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (.mp3)

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (.mp3) is the most commonly used audio format. MP3 files are nothing but compress Waveform Audio (.wav) files. They are compressed to 1/12 bit rate and thus so many songs can be stored in small memory.

For example 700MB disc store no more than 7-10 songs in (.wav) format where one can store more than 40 songs of (.mp3) audio format in the same space.

Windows Media Audio (.wma)

Windows Media Audio (.wma) audio format was developed by Microsoft Corp. exclusively for their Windows Media Player. It was launched with an intention to compete with MP3 audio format.

Microsoft Developers team’s comparison between audio formats suggests that (.wma) could compress an audio file three times more than (.mp3) yet retaining the similar sound quality.

Ogg Vorbis (.ogg)

Although this is not a very popular format for handheld music players like iPod Touch or iPhone but still it has similar effect on audio file like MP3. It compresses the file such that more songs can be accommodated in definite memory.

(.ogg) audio format compresses the file at a variable bit rate thus saving more memory on low note. On the other hand (.mp3) audio format has this property to compress a file at the constant bit rate thus the audio quality remains same throughout, even if there is no sound.

Thus (.ogg) formats take even less memory and thus is a preferred format on Windows. It is similar to (.mkv) video format.

I hope you understood the difference between these audio formats with this detailed comparison of audio format. Please comment below on Wizard Journal for any suggest or queries. Please share with your friends too.

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