Comparison Audio Formats

In our world today, audio formats are one of the most important things related to technology. The release of the iPod especially, increased the demand of audio that occupied less space but without loosing quality, therefore many audio formats appeared, such as the famous and probably most used MP3, but others such as AIFF, WAV, WMA and RA.

In this post I am going to explain the characteristics of each of these audio formats and their differences.


MP3 (.mp3) : Probably the most famous audio format, MP3 is the name given to the file extension of the type of file MPEG, audio layer 3. Layer 3 is one of three coding schemes for the compression of audio signals. Layer 3 uses audio coding to eliminate any unimportant or irrelevant parts of the sound signal, thus eliminating the things that humans cannot hear. It also increases the frequency resolution by 18 times compared to that of level 2. The result of all of these characteristics, is that it shrinks the storage space of the sound by a factor of 12 from something like a CD, without sacrificing its sounds, therefore allowing users to have more songs in the iPods for example. It can be opened and used practically on every device.

WMA – Window Media Audio (.wma) : This audio format is a Microsoft file format for encoding digital audio files, and is similar to MP3. However, though being similar, it can compress files at a higher rate than MP3. A really good aspect of this audio format is that the file extension can be of any size compressed to match any different connection speeds, or bandwidth. It is often used to play music from the Web. However, this audio format cannot be played on an iPod.

WAV (.wav) : WAV is the format used for storing sounds in files developed by Microsoft and IBM together. Originally, the support for WAV files was built into Window 95, and it was the de facto standard for sound on PCs. These .wav files can be played nearly by all Windows application that supports sound. It is often saved in a 44.1 KHz, 16-bit, stereo format, usually used for CDs. Therefore this format is really similar to AIFF, explained below.

RA – Real Audio (.ra .ram .rm) : Real Audio is a proprietary format, and is used for streaming audio that enables you to play digital audio files in real-time. To use this type of file you must have RealPlayer (for Windows or Mac), which you can download for free. Real Audio was developed by RealNetworks. 

AIFF – Audio Interchange File Format (.AIF or .IEF) : AIFF is a common format for storing and transmitting sampled sound. It was developed by Apple and if the standard audio for Macintosh computers. It is also used by Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI). A big difference from the rest of formats, is that AIFF format does not support data compression, so AIFF files tend to be large. Its quality audio is similar to that of a .wav file and it is commonly used to store standard CD audio.It has a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz and are 16-bit.




I hope this post has been helpful. Thank you for reading!