• Difference between analog and digital (explained in previous article).
• Difference between a compressed format and non compressed format.
• Short listing of actual formats, what software uses them, and what they are good for.

The funny thing with audio file formats is that just about all the formats are geared for either PC or Mac computers. Though lately in the past 5 to 7 years they have gotten explosively cross compatible. So each file type has a home and origin from a particular platform (PC or Mac).  But almost all the popular software now plays almost every popular file type. In short we will be discussing these formats; WAV (.wav), AIF(.aif or .aiff), PCM(.wav or .aif), MP3(.mp3), WMA(.wma), OGG(.ogg), MPEG-4(.mp4 or m4a), and AAC(.aac).

The simplest format to discuss are non-compressed formats. Non-compressed formats basically capture the sound at the indicated rate of your equipment with no extra processing. What I mean is if you are recording with a digital piece of equipment, some where in the setup of that equipment you can indicate what format or resolution you can record at. These resolutions will be illustrated in kilohertz and bytes like this 44.1khz/16bit which is standard CD quality. There are devices that will record better than CD quality and you can see resolutions like 96khz/24bit. Basically the higher the number the better the quality.

The most popular of these non-compressed formats are WAV and AIF. WAV files are a PC based file format and sometimes are called broadcast WAV file. AIF (or AIFF) is a MAC based file format. So if you are working on a MAC, yes your software can play WAV files, but I would always recommend using the file format that is native to your system. You will incur less issues down the road. Same thing applies to PC’s, when all possible stick to WAV files. These formats offer the most resolution compatibilities than any other format.  If you are a professional and quality is important to you these are the formats you need to be using.

Now from time to time you will hear a format called PCM. This is a little strange in that the file extension does not end in ‘pcm’. PCM more or less means that the file is in a header-less non-compressed format. This can be in either WAV or AIF format.

Moving to Compressed formats that should, in theory, be the next in line for best quality. These formats are MPEG-4 and WMA which utilize a ‘lossless’ compression algorithms.  Naturally these formats also have origins to particular platforms. MPEG-4 has it origins with MAC, and WMA is for PC. WMA stands for windows media audio. The concept of this compression format is to compress the file as much as possible, BUT without diminishing quality. The funny thing about these compressed formats is that they are not the popular ones. They are very proprietary and through history never really were cross platform friendly, which in my opinion is one of the main reason they are not used more today. The funny thing is that I have used these formats SO little, that I can’t even get into the resolutions they support. The important thing to remember for this compression type is quality is priority.

The last format is the most popular at the time for the general public at the consumer level. This is the ‘lossy’ compression formats of MP3 and AAC. MP3 is mostly PC based and AAC is the MAC particularly Itunes format. These formats do not focus on quality, rather than reduce quality in order to achieve the desired file size. The resolution of these files are measured in kilobytes per second or ‘kbps’. What exploded these audio file types to super status is the ability to obtain ‘near’ CD quality with an average of 1/10th the file size. So an average 40mb wav file can be compressed to 4mb and will sound just as good to the standard consumer user.

To take lossy compression one step further, there is two methods of this compression. They are CBR and VBR which are constant bit rate and variable bit rate. CBR is the most used and my recommended rate. It offers consistency and seems to be the most reliable amongst all players. Reliability is the key for this format when it comes to small mp3 players and Ipods. It is my feeling VBR is used to imitate the nature of lossloss compression and actually compressed to regards of quality. But be warned, eventually VBR has caused me problems.

So what are the best resolutions to use for MP3 and AAC? Depends on your use. If you want great consumer level quality you will want to compress as Itunes does, which is 256kbps or one step up to 320kbps. No need to go any higher. In my opinion 256kbps sounds awesome and most will never ever tell the difference. It’s even difficult for me to tell. I have personally found that you can go as low as 192kbps and still get great quality. Once you get below 160′s then you start hearing things that any consumer user can detect. So what is it that they are detecting?  First to go is the high and low frequencies. The high’s won’t be as crisp or defined. The low frequencies will not be as round, hard hitting, and also defined. After that then the entire frequency spectrum gets diminished.

The interesting thing with MP3 and AAC, is that they are private or proprietary formats. Which means the persons or company that own these patents and compression formats have total control and any software that utilizes these formats to create audio files has to get permission and pay for the right to do so. With the internet and open source methodology growing vastly a new file format has become popular in a small way is OGG. OGG is a lossy compression type and it is open source. Which means it is free to use, share, modify, and improve. But I will say that, I have never encountered this file format in my professional experience. Only once in a blue running across it on the internet and hearing of its popularity. I will always stick with WAV, AIF, MP3, and AAC.

Below is a music file that I have originally created in WAV file. This is the file sizes compressing it to other formats.

Song Length: 3:36

WAV (44.1khz/16bit)- 36.4 MB

AIF – (44.1khz/16bit)- 36.4 MB

WMA- (256kbps)- 6.65 MB (still at 44.1khz/16bit)

MPEG-4- (254kbps)- 6.58 MB (still at 44.1khz/16bit)

MP3 (256kbps)- 6.6 MB (still at 44.1khz/16bit)

AAC (256kbps)- 6.6 MB (still at 44.1khz/16bit)

So these are just file size comparison. You can do your own test and check for actual quality. Either PC vs MAC file format are no difference in size. I hope this helps your understanding of audio file formats!

Analog recordings posses the most true to original sound. That is simply fact.  Sure the color of the sound can be altered when it comes to frequencies. Referring to high, mid, and low sounds for the novices out there.  But when analog recording to tape, you are capturing the absolute maximum of the audio spectrum as technology provides at the moment. You are also capturing the most completeness of the audio that is being recorded. In the analog recording process you are merely transforming the wave energy from the sound to a medium like an LP record while still being in wave form.

So how does this differ from Digital recording? Digital goes beyond transforming the energy because it has to record it to a hard drive, which at its simplest form, can only store information in binary. Remember binary….ones and zeros? Yes computer hard drives still store information in ones and zeros. Taking the complexity out of this, when a computer saves the analog sound it is like a single frame in a film strip. It has to save the information into tiny increments. Another analogy is like thinking back to your childhood and making your first flip book animation. So recording in digital you loose the seamless energy transformation into these snippets, hence why recording digital audio can never 100% compare to analog. Digital captures snippets of the waveform, not the complete waveform. The manner in which digital recording captures these snippets are measure and illustrated in bits and khz. KHZ is short for kilohertz. An example of this is how the standard compact disc (CD) is recorded at 44khz at 16bits. We will go through digital recording settings of bits and khz in a different article.

Now please don’t jump to conclusions in this discussion about Analog vs Digital. Though analog recording is the truest to the original sound, digital has an absolute ton of plus sides. It is extremely important to point out that without such drastic improvements in the computer industry, the recording industry would not be where it is today. Take as you will, it could be a good thing or bad thing.

When I first started recording back in the mid to late 90′s, the abilities of those computers and digital recording software was a joke to today’s standards. So I can attest how far they have come personally. Now I do not have much personal experience utilizing analog tape recorders other than from school. But from within my early studies, books read, and testaments from engineer friends who actually worked multi-track reels as a profession, working only in an analog world took an extremely gifted hand and patience in splicing analog tape. Digital knocks analog on its butt when it comes to shear amount of abilities in the actual recording process. From the vast ability of takes, dubs, recall ability, non-destructive editing, storage requirements, and special processing working in the digital realm just makes complete and utter business sense for most recording situations and companies. Especially how recording has become extremely affordable to any hobbyist  musician or even film producer.

From articles, videos, and personal experience the funniest thing that can almost be presented as fact is that most of the population of the world cannot even distinguish between an analog production or recording production. In multiple A-B tests  only 50% to 67% of professional recording engineers accurately picked out an analog recording from digital. Now these are professionals. When it comes to everyday people the numbers are just completely random. With these numbers, you do have to question why go through the expense and limitations of analog recordings?

The argument today is even more upset from today’s young and old professional audio engineers. They are arguing that MP3′s are killing audio and song quality. From analog to digital and now from CD quality to MP3 quality the debate lives on. I have deeper thoughts and prediction on the MP3 topic that is also for another article.

To conclude this discussion of Analog vs Digital I would have to say they both will always have there place in our world. There are those artist and companies where they have the money to spend, where the highest quality is the utmost importance, and they are actually great artist. Great in the way that they can record a song or production with extremely minimal takes. Therefore aiding in making an analog recording logical. Digital recordings are improving so incredibly much that I bet in 5 to 10 years from now not a single person will truly be able to tell CONSISTENTLY distinguish a digital from analog recording. The last factor in that is how the final product is delivered. We can already record consistently at double the quality of CD resolutions. Which most of the pro’s are working at 96khz / 24 bit. I think I have heard of some systems experimenting ever higher. But the end result, what the consumer listens to, will always puts us at risk of how much our efforts to make a great sounding recording useless.

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For those who have intermediate knowledge of audio and production, or may even be professionals, I am not trying to blow your mind with some kind of vast intellect. My goals is to merely help you place the icing on the cake. Also to primarily learn from my mistakes and successes. We can get into details of actual DAW software, mixing techniques, recording and more.

I accept and welcome comments. Though I do ask that comments pertain to the benefit of the lesson or tutorial. I have no time or tolerance to debate back and forth about silly things. This is my blog…not a forum.

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