Which Audio Format is best?

Can’t tell your .aiff files from .wma files? Just read on to know why choosing the correct sound file format is important—whether you plan to convert your music to a digital format for a portable player or want to download music from royalty free music websites such as www.premiumbeat.com.

While sound can be stored in many formats, the key differences between these file formats include:

1. Their ability to compress sound: This decides how much storage space you will require. While a few uncompressed songs won’t slow your hard disk, a full library could be huge.
   
   
2. Their ability to maintain the sound quality: Lossy or lossless audio formats is a forever debate. The more you compress your audio files, the lower the audio quality. Compression does save you valuable disk space, but for music aficionados this also means loss of audio details.
   
   
3. Universal or software dependant: While some formats can be played on almost any music software using any music player; some are designed to restrict copying and sharing of the audio. That means they are software dependant, and you cannot listen to them unless you have the software or the player to run that specific file format.

Audio file formats and their unique limitations or benefits become an important consideration when you who want to download music from the Internet and use it in your PowerPoint presentations, as background music for your web page, as production music for a video, or simply store it on your iPod for some good listening. Whichever way you intend using your music, here’s a quick guide to some of the common file formats, their strengths and weaknesses.

1. MIDI: Short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, MIDI files are extremely small and are supported by many different softwares and Internet browsers. This flexibility of access allows it to be used in amateur as well as professional music making. File extension .midi  However many people do not enjoy listening to the limited amplitude of midi music files.

2. RealAudio: This file format was developed to play streaming audio with low bandwidth Internet. Common application includes Internet radio. It is also popular with websites that allow users to listen to on-line music. However, because of low bandwidth, you might experience reduction in audio quality. File extension .rm or .ram

3. AIFF: Developed by Apple, AIFF is short for Audio Interchange File Format. These files are not supported by all web browsers or all platforms. File extension .aif or .aiff

4. WAV: Developed by IBM and Microsoft, WAV stands for ‘waveform’. This file format does not compress audio. Understandably, WAV files take up a sizeable chunk of the storage space on your disk! However, this lossless format assures you of CD quality audio that can be used for broadcasting, or distributed through DVDs and CDs. An added advantage is that the WAV format is easy to transform and compress into MP3 or other formats if the need arises. And importantly, it runs on any Windows or Mac systems as well as most web browsers. So, if space crunch is not a problem, consider the WAV format to store and distribute music. File extension .wav.

5. MP3: Perhaps the most popular sound format for music recording, MP3 files are the sound part of MPEG files. They can compress audio files to about one tenth of their original size while delivering close to CD quality audio. Because of their small file size, MP3 files are quick to download. In fact, they have become the standard when people want music for their multimedia presentations, or are looking for background music in their web pages. However, a major drawback of the MP3 format is that it is not a good format to use for looping. This is because MP3 files contain an unspecified amount of silence at the start and end of the file. To avoid the burp or hiccup this causes, and achieve a usable loop, opt for WAV format. MP3 files are supported by most software systems, and come with the file extension .mp3

6. WMA: Short for Windows Media Audio, this format compares in quality to MP3, and is compatible with most players, except the iPod. Another plus is that it can be delivered as a continuous flow of data, which makes it practical for use in Internet radio or on-line music. File extension .wma

If you are still wondering which audio format will best suit your needs, consider the end use of the audio files.

While a WAV file allows you to retain the flexibility to transform and/or compress the music at any level to fit your needs or to use it without compression for a fuller sound; the small size of an MP3 file is your best bet if you want background music for a PowerPoint presentation, or if you are looking to embed audio files in your web page, as these files will download quickly and still retain a high sound quality.

WAV files are also a good option if you want royalty free production music for a video. Since you might want to edit the digital audio to fit your shots, this lossless audio format will help you preserve the audio quality. It is also ideal as production music for flash movies. Just use the WAV format and let Flash do the compression. Starting the process with WAV files, allows you to decide the best compression level for your presentation. All you have to do is import the WAV file directly into Flash, and place the sound on a layer. Flash will automatically compress the WAV file into an MP3 format while maintaining the integrity of the loop. The idea is to let Flash handle the MP3 compression instead of doing it before importing the sound into Flash.

And now that you are armed with the basics of audio formats, check out the royalty free music on websites such as www.premiumbeat.com, and start download the music you need!

This article was originally published at  www.premiumbeat.com a leading Royalty Free Music Library.

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