What is the best sounding audio format in the world today? CDs, of course. So when it comes to audio formats, CDs are naturally at the forefront. In most of the playback software "open file type", you can see the *.cda format, which is the CD track. Standard CD format is 44.1K sampling frequency, rate of 88K / sec, 16-bit quantization, because the CD track can be said to be nearly lossless, so its sound is basically faithful to the original sound, so if you are an audiophile, if you are, CD is your first choice. CDs can be played in a CD player or replayed with various playback software on your computer. A CD audio file is a ＊.cda file, which is just an index information, and does not really contain sound information, so no matter how long or short the CD music is, the "＊.cda file" you see on your computer is 44 bytes long. Note: You can not directly copy the CD format of the ＊.cda file to the hard disk to play, you need to use the EAC such as the capture track software to convert the CD format files into WAV, this conversion process if the quality of the CD-ROM drive over the quality and the parameters of the EAC set properly, it can be said to be basically non-destructive to capture the audio. We recommend you to use this method.

WAV: Lossless Music

is a sound file format developed by Microsoft, which conforms to the PIFFResource Interchange File Format file specification for preserving audio information resources on the WINDOWS platform, and is supported by the WINDOWS platform and its applications. "WAV" format supports MSADPCM, CCITT A LAW and other compression algorithms, support for a variety of audio bits, sampling frequency and channel, the standard format of the WAV file and the same CD format, but also 44.1K sampling frequency, rate of 88K / sec, 16-bit quantization bit, see, right? The quality of WAV files is comparable to that of CDs, and it is also a popular file format on PCs. Almost all audio editing software recognizes the WAV format.

By the way, the AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) format developed by Apple and the AU format developed for UNIX systems are very similar to WAV, and are supported by most audio editing software in these common music formats.

MP3: A Popular Trend

The MP3 format was born in Germany in the 1980s, and the so-called MP3 refers to the audio portion of the MPEG standard, which is the MPEG audio layer. According to the compression quality and encoding process is divided into three layers, corresponding to the "*.mp1" / "*.mp2" / "*.mp3" of the three kinds of sound files. Need to draw your attention to the place is: MPEG audio file compression is a lossy compression, MPEG3 audio encoding with 10:1 ~ 12:1 high compression rate, while maintaining the basic low audio part of the distortion, but the sacrifice of the sound file in the 12KHz to 16KHz high-audio part of the quality of the file in exchange for the size of the file, the same length of the music file, with the format *.mp3 mp3 format for the same length of a music file, generally only 1/10 of a *.wav file, and the sound quality is inferior to that of a CD format or WAV format sound file. Because of its small file size and good sound quality, there was no other audio format that could match it at the beginning of its existence, thus providing good conditions for the development of the *.mp3 format. Until now, this format is still popular for a while, as the status of the mainstream audio format is difficult to be shaken. However, the copyright of MP3 music has always been a problem that we can't find a way to solve, because MP3 has no copyright protection technology, which means that anyone can use it.

The MP3 format compresses music at a variety of sampling frequencies, from 64Kbps or less to save space, or 320Kbps to achieve a very high sound quality. We encoded a 3-minute song at 128Kbps with the MP3 encoder (the best encoder nowadays) MusicMatch Jukebox 6.0 with Fraunhofer IIS Mpeg Lyaer3, and got a 2.82MB MP3 file. The default CBR (Fixed Sampling Frequency) technique samples a song at a fixed frequency, while the VBR (Variable Sampling Frequency) technique allows you to increase the sampling frequency when the music is "busy" to get a higher sound quality, although the resulting MP3 file may not be playable on some players. We set the VBR level to be essentially the same as the previous CBR file, and the resulting VBR MP3 file was 2.9MB.

MIDI: A Composer's Favorite

Anyone who plays a lot of music should have heard the term MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) before, which allows digital synthesizers and other devices to be used in conjunction with other devices, such as a computer. MIDI allows digital synthesizers and other devices to exchange data. the MID file format is inherited from MIDI. a MID file is not a piece of recorded sound, but rather a set of commands that record information about the sound, and then tell the sound card how to reproduce the music. Such a MIDI file uses only about 5 to 10 KB for every minute of music stored in it. today, MID files are mainly used for original instrumental works, amateur performances of popular songs, game sound tracks, and electronic greeting cards. The effect of playback of *.mid files depends entirely on the grade of the sound card. The greatest use of the *.mid format is in the field of computer composition. A ＊.mid file can be written in composition software, or it can be made into a ＊.mid file by inputting music played by an external sequencer into the computer through the MIDI port of the sound card.

WMA: The Most Powerful Enemy

The WMA (Windows Media Audio) format is a heavyweight from Microsoft, with a strong backend and better sound quality than the MP3 format, and even better than the RA format, which, like the VQF format developed by Japan's Yamaha, is a way to reduce data traffic but maintain sound quality to achieve a higher compression rate than MP3. MP3 compression rate is higher than the purpose of the WMA compression rate can generally reach 1:18 or so, another advantage of WMA is that content providers can be DRM (Digital Rights Management) program such as Windows Media Rights Manager 7 to join the anti-copy protection. This built-in copyright protection technology can limit the playback time and the number of times and even play the machine and so on, which was piracy stirred up by the music company is a gospel, in addition, WMA also supports audio streaming (Stream) technology, suitable for online playback on the network, as Microsoft to seize the network of music pioneers can be said to be technologically advanced, strong headwinds, and even more convenient is not to like the MP3 as the need to install additional players. More conveniently, you don't need to install an additional player like MP3, and the seamless bundling of Windows OS and Windows Media Player allows you to play WMA music directly as long as you have installed Windows OS, and the new version of Windows Media Player 7.0 has added the function of converting CD-ROMs to WMA sound format directly. In the new operating system Windows XP, WMA is the default encoding format, we all know what happened to Netscape, and now the "wolves" are coming again.WMA is a format that allows you to adjust the sound quality when recording. WMA is a format that allows you to adjust the sound quality when recording. The same format can be used for webcasting if the sound quality is good enough to be comparable to a CD, and if the compression rate is high enough. Although now the network is not very popular, but in Microsoft's large-scale promotion has been recognized by more and more sites and strong support, in the field of network music is close to the *.mp3, in the network broadcasting, but also is dividing the world under Real. As a result, almost all audio formats are feeling the pressure of the WMA format.