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WAV
- WAV, short for Waveform Audio File Format, is an uncompressed audio format. It's a staple in the music industry and a common format for CDs. WAV files offer the purest form of audio, with no compression, resulting in large file sizes compared to their lossless compressed counterparts.
www.soundtrap.com/content/blog/audio-formats-explainedImprove Your Sound: Different Audio Formats Explained - Soundtrap
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Jul 25, 2022 · WAV and AIFF are arguably the most popular uncompressed audio file formats, both based on PCM (Pulse Code Modulation), which is widely recognised as the most straightforward audio storage mechanism in the digital domain.
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- Uncompressed Audio Formats
- Audio Formats with Lossy Compression
- Audio Formats with Lossless Compression
- Which Audio File Format Is Right For You?
Uncompressed audio consists of real sound waves captured and converted to digital format without further processing. As a result, uncompressed audio files tend to be the most accurate but take up a lot of disk space—about 34 MB per minute for 24-bit 96KHz stereo. They're one of the storage-guzzling audio file formats in multimedia.
Lossy compression is when some data is lost during the compression process—and compression is important because uncompressed audio takes up lots of disk space. In other words, lossy compression means sacrificing sound quality and audio fidelity for smaller file sizes. When it's done poorly, you'll hear artifacts and other weirdness in the audio. Bu...
Opposite lossy compression is lossless compression, a method that reduces an audio file's size without ANY data loss between the source and the compressed audio files. The downside is that lossless compressed audio files are bigger than lossy compressed audio files—up to 2x to 5x larger for the same source file.
When choosing an audio format, uncompressed files are best when working with raw audio, while lossless compression, like FLAC, provides excellent quality for music listening but requires more storage. For casual listening, lossy formats like MP3 can save space without much discernible quality reduction. However, high-quality audio files won't matte...
- Joel Lee
- Former Editor-In-Chief
Jun 7, 2024 · The most common uncompressed audio formats include WAV and AIFF. What is compressed audio? Compressed audio formats use compression algorithms to reduce the size of an audio file without sacrificing too much audio quality.
Jul 29, 2024 · AIFF and WAV are uncompressed audio formats, which means they store audio data in its raw form without employing compression techniques. As a result, they deliver excellent audio quality but also result in large file sizes.
Dec 7, 2023 · Lossless uncompressed audio file formats faithfully replicate and store the complete digital audio information of a source file on a 1:1 basis. In fact, the original recorded source files used by mixing and recording engineers are nearly always lossless and uncompressed.
There are three major groups of audio file formats: Uncompressed audio formats, such as WAV, AIFF, AU or raw header-less PCM; Note wav can also use compression as well.
For compressed we recommend FLAC. This is best for simply listening to music/audio. It also has the added benefit of the smaller file sizes compression can bring. For uncompressed we have to go with WAV on Windows or AIFF on Mac. This is best for when you also have a need to edit the audio files.
