While we go about our daily activities, we come across audio file extensions in movies we watch and music we listen to. The audio file format is a type of format in which digital audio data are stored on an electronic device. All audio file formats possess different characteristics, from the quality of sound they deliver to the codec and compression style that works with them. It is also important to note that the sampling rate and bit depth are what determines the quality of an audio file, so the higher the sampling rate and bit depth, the better the sound quality.
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MP3
MPEG-1 audio layer III, popularly known as MP3 is undeniably the most sort after audio format. Created in 1993, MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3 is a format for compressing a sound sequence into a very small file-up to one-twelfth of the original file size and also preserving the original sound quality when it is played. This is achieved by the use of lossy Compression which helps in the significant reduction of audio file size.
FLAC
FLAC is an acronym for Free Lossless Audio Codec; it was first introduced in 2001. Its method of compression is totally different from the MP3 format; it uses lossless audio compression. This method of file compression makes a file more manageable and saves file storage space, it has a unique way of reducing the size of the audio file without diminishing the audio quality. The lossless audio compression format is an open-source format that allows the use of FLAC files across multiple operating systems like Android 3.1 upward, iOS 11 upward, MacOS high Sierra upward and Windows 10.
AAC
AAC, fully known as Advance Audio Coding, is an audio file format similar to the MP3 audio format, but the ACC file offers improved coding that supports multi-channel audio. However, Because of its ability to use lossy compression to produce better sound quality than the MP3 file at the same bit rate and support multi-channel audio, it has been adopted by the likes of Youtube, iPhones, PlayStations, Nintendo and Android phones as the standard audio format.
WAV
WAV audio format is different from the audio file formats talked about above because of its uncompressed nature. WAV which stands for Waveform audio format was developed by Microsoft. The WAV file format is the most commonly used audio format on Microsoft Windows operating systems, its audio format offers a higher sampling rate and bit depth than MP3 and AAC and the files usually contain raw, uncompressed audio data.
