Beginner s Guide to Music File Formats

Beginner s Guide to Music File Formats Are you confused by the different types of formats of music files there? Most of you have heard of, would be the popular MP3 format, but you know there are other alteatives, such as digital music formats, WAV, WMA, RA and MIDI? Some of them improved sound quality of MP3 (eg the WAV format), but even more disk space. Others, such as WMA files, which is smaller than the MP3 format and are suitable for portable music players.Let 's scroll through the various file formats: MP3 file FormatMP3 files have the extension ". Mp3 "and are available for download from many websites. MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3)-technology compresses a sound sequence into a very small file (usually one twelfth of the original size). The designers of MP3 compression algorithm managed to do this, from the sounds, the human ear can not perceive. While the MP3 technology is impressive, has been misused by the music pirates. You can easily play MP3 files from commercial CDs and available for download. The RIAA and major music companies have been cracking for the distribution and sharing of MP3 files in this manner.The file FormatWMA WMA (Windows Media Audio) is Microsoft format of your music files that they are marketing aggressively. WMA files are smaller than MP3 files, but still a decent level of sound quality. This format is very popular in the sampling sites for music and also in portable music player. However, whether WMA will overtake the popularity of MP3 or WAV file format for seen.The wave file is characterized by the suffix ". Wav ". This file format provides raw music, uncompressed audio data. Initially by Microsoft, so files are still widespread (examples of startup and shutdown sounds for Windows). The sound quality is excellent, but the file size is very large. A pop song in wave format can store up to 30 MB of disk space or more.The AIFF file FormatThe AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) is a popular music file formats for the Apple Macintosh operating system. In some way the Macintosh equivalent of wave files. AIFF files have the extension ". Aif "when you use a PC. They contain raw audio data (which is in excellent sound quality), but also a large amount of disk space.The MIDI file FormatThe MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) file format was originally designed for recording and playing music on digital synthesizers. MIDI files are very small. The reason is that the MIDI file only contains information on how music is produced (eg note-on and note-off). The sound card plays the MIDI file is this information and plays music with a sound card built wavetable.The file FormatRA RA (Real Audio) files support streaming technology. Created by Progressive Networks, an RA file is optimized for live, streaming audio from websites. RA files are best played Real Audio Player, freely downloadable from Progressive Networks.ConclusionWell packages that our reporting on the most popular music file formats are. You may be interested to know that there are many software applications, will the music from one format to another (eg MP3 to WAV to AIFF or WAV). Perform a search for these applications in the Author Gary Hendricks --