An Introduction to Common Audio Formats

Multimedia Systems

Dr. Ahmad Hammoud

Intro
Different Sound Formats:
Size Quality Support

How many audio-file formats:

< 20 Between 20 and 40 Between 41 and 100 > 100

MP3
MP3 stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer III It is a popular digital audio encoding and a form of lossy data compression

It is designed for drastically decreasing audio data A music file stored in MP3 format is only 1\10 the size of wav format

Features of MP3 Audio Format

MP3 is a data compressed format It abandons the unimportant data to human audition in the audio data of pulse code modulation, so that it can get a smaller size file MP3 gets much hardware support, such as portable media player, DVD player and CD player

WAV
Waveform Audio File Format, commonly known as WAV, is an audio file format designed by Microsoft It is used to save audio information resources of Windows system and supported by Windows system and its application program On the platform of Windows, WAV is the best supported audio format WAV can apply to all audio software and achieve the request of high tone quality WAV is the first choice of music editor and creation

Features of WAV Audio Format

Easy to encode and decode Digitizing sounds 100% faithful to the original source

WMA
WMA refers to Windows Media Audio It is created by Microsoft to compete with MP3 WMA exceeds MP3 in compression ratio and tone quality WMA is much better than RA (Real Audio) Files encoded with Windows Media Player are identified by filename extension of .wma

Features of WMA Audio Format

It supports streaming technology, that is, you can read while its playing. So WMA can easily realize radio online. It supports certification with code from WMA version 7. Without permission, you have no way to listen even you illegally copy it to local.

AAC
AAC refers to Advanced Audio Coding AAC is a standardized, lossy compression format Compared with MP3, AAC tone quality is much better and can save about 30% shortage space and bandwidth It can be said that AAC is an extremely comprehensive encoding way The feature of multichannel and high sample frequency fits greatly to DVD-Audio

Features of AAC Audio Format

Improving compression rate: you can get higher tone quality with smaller file, and the tone quality is apparently better than MP3 Supporting multichannel: it provides 48 channels at most

Higher resolution: it supports the highest sample frequency up to 96 KHz Improved encoding efficiency: encoding takes up less resource

RA
RealAudio is abbreviated as RA RA is a mature audio format of RealNetworks RA is quite a popular media format that streamed in real-time on the Internet as the music file can be played while it is downloaded RA is mainly used for online music appreciation, such Real files have the following forms: RA (RealAudio), RM (RealMedia), and RMX (RealAudio Secured)

Features of RA Audio Format

RA uses lossy compressed technology Compression rate is high, so the tone quality is relatively poor while the file size is the smallest

It can change sound quality along with the different network bandwidth

Important Terminology I
BIT RATE A songs bit rate is a measurement of the amount of data being transmitted or processed As a song is played back or recorded, there is a transfer of data, measured in kbps (kilobits per second; a kilobit is one thousand bits) As the bit rate increases so does the quality of the song. For example, although 128kbps is considered to be the standard for MP3s in terms of quality versus file size, an MP3 file encoded at 192kbps may sound noticeably better

Important Terminology II
CODEC is an acronym for compression/decompression Codecs are components - either hardware or software - which compress the size of a media file during saving and decompress the file during playback

Important Terminology III

DRM Also known as digital rights management, these copyprotection schemes are used by music distributors such as Apples iTunes Music Store to restrict their songs from being played on other computers or digital-music devices. FAIRPLAY Apples form of DRM, which prevents unauthorized computers and non-iPod digital music players from playing songs bought from the iTunes Music Store. PLAYSFORSURE Microsoft's form of DRM. iPods and iTunes cannot play music encoded with Microsoft's DRM

Important Terminology IV
ID3 TAG In MP3 files, the ID3 tag allows song information such as the title, artist, album, track number, and so on to be stored in the file itself

Important Terminology V
LOSSLESS COMPRESSION This type of codec allows file compression while keeping all of the files original quality. Some examples are the Apple Lossless Encoder, FLAC, and the common file-compression format known as ZIP. LOSSY COMPRESSION This type of codec discards some data in order to make songs small usually, however, the drop in quality due to the discarded data is not noticeable except to experts ears. MP3, JPEG, and Ogg Vorbis are all lossy-compression formats

Important Terminology VI
MONO is short for monophonic. A mono audio system pumps all the sound through only one channel - even if you have multiple speakers connected to your audio source, youll hear the same sound from each of your speakers

STEREO is short for stereophonic. A stereo audio system distributes sound through two separate channels, left and right. The amount of the same sound coming from the two speakers determines where that sound appears to be coming from in the stereo field; a sound coming from only the left speaker, for example, sounds as if its coming from only the left, while an equal amount of a sound coming from both speakers appears to be emanating from the middle of the stereo field

Important Terminology VII

SAMPLE RATE A digital audio files sample rate indicates how many times the signal was measured when it was converted from an analog signal to a digital one Sample rates are measured in Hz, and as the sampling rate increases so does the audio quality To maintain sound quality, the sampling rate must be twice the original audios highest frequency. The standard CD and MP3 sample rate is 44.100kHz

Important Terminology VIII

SURROUND SOUND Sound distribution that involves multiple channels (ranging from three to ten) to create a sense of realism. For example, some DVD movies have audio tracks that can use five different channels.