May 24, 2006

Hi, All!

This Week: What is the best music format?

Mr. ComputerFAQ:
Which one of all those different audio file formats like .mp3 and .au and mov and .wav is best? Which one should we use for what? Which is the file format on audio CD's? Do any save sound with higher quality and which ones make the smallest files? And add to my questions- what does RIP mean?

I believe that MP3 is the best audio file to use. It is the most popular, and most new CD/DVD players can play it. It has the best sound for the smallest file size.

So what is MP3? MP3 is the file extension name and also the name of the type of file for

see <http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/ MPEG.htm>

MPEG, an acronym for Moving Picture Experts Group (pronounced m-peg) audio layer 3. Layer 3 is one of three

see <http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/ MP3.html##>

coding schemes (layers 1, 2, and 3) for the compression of audio signals. Layer 3 uses perceptual audio coding and psychoacoustic compression to remove all superfluous information (more specifically, the redundant and irrelevant parts of a sound signal, the stuff the human ear doesn't hear anyway). It also adds a MDCT (Modified Discrete Cosine Transform) that implements a filter bank, increasing the frequency resolution 18 times higher than that of layer 2. The result is technology that shrinks the original sound from a song (with a bit rate of 1411.2 kilobits per second of stereo music) by a factor of 12 (down to 112-128kbps) without sacrificing sound quality. (Whew!)

AU and MOV are mostly used by Apple for Macs so are not as common but probably have the same compression and sound quality as MP3.

WAV is the worst, having very little compression, a tinny sound, and large files. It is used mostly for sound cues in Windows and Macs.

The manufactured music CDs use a proprietary format that is converted to MP3 if one RIPs (as in rip off) them to a file.

'Til next week,
(ComputerFAQ#293)

Robert

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