A Helpful Guide to Choosing the Right Audio Compression Format

The reason why audio presentations are compressed is because they would otherwise be too large to store on your home computer. Therefore, many compression formats have made more room for musical files as well as education tutorials.

If you are wondering which compression format you will need to use, you can take a look at the list of some of the following most common formats available and decide for yourself. Some common compression file formats include the following:

MP3: This is the most common audio compression format. Most of the music played over the Internet is presented in this format. The advantage to using this format into which to compress your audio files is that most people know how to play files in this format. A majority of households have some type of MP3 player installed on their computer. Also, some people have purchased a portable MP3 playing device in which they can carry all of their MP3 files around with them. The disadvantage is that the sound quality is sometimes very low. It mostly depends upon the speed of your Internet connection. The higher speed of Internet connection the better.

WMA: The biggest advantage of this compression format is that it produces a higher quality sound than other compression formats, such as the MP3 format. The disadvantage of this is that many players do not support this type of audio file very well. Microsoft creates this one. Perhaps it will be become more of a user-friendly audio playing solution once people know more about it.

AAC: You can use this with the Apple iPod and the iTunes software. This may be okay since these two players are very popular right now. However, you cannot use it with much else. You would have to get all of your music at Apple’s online music store.

Ogg Vorbis: This type of compression format is becoming more and more popular. Unfortunately it only comes with limited player support.

ATRAC: This is a format almost exclusively for Sony players such as the Network Walkman, model NW-HD1. This is thought to be as primitive as using Beta VCR tapes. This one is not used very often.

The above mentioned compressed file types are considered Lossy compression formats. The following are considered Lossless compression formats:

Apple Lossless: Of course when you use this format you and your website viewers are limited to Apple products.

FLAC: is a well-known format, especially by audio geeks. It helps produce very high quality sound. However, not many common computer media players support it. It one that most likely deserves more recognition that is receives, and could be more beneficial to people in the future.

The Lossy compression formats are ones that reduce the size of the file by removing the parts of the music this software considers inaudible or unnecessary. The lossless software works in a similar way that the Lossy software works except that it reduces the file size of music or other audio without removing bits of its sound.

Overall, this whole process can be explained in the following way: the more compression you use to reduce the size of a file the more music you will lose. The result will be a poorer quality sound. However, in the process of using each type of compression format you will be able to adjust the level of music being removed, if it is a lossy-type format.

You also have the option of using Variable Bit recording, which has the capability of detecting how much space each type of musical passage needs. This method will allow you to have a much better sound than when the music is compressed at the same rate throughout the entire production.

Perhaps if you do choose a compression format other than the standard MP3 format you will help increase public awareness of the quality of the sound. Sooner or later more people will be choosing other than the MP3 format. On the other hand, the MP3 format is also improving every day. The choice is up to you. Use the above information at your own risk.

No shortage of information regarding various audio compression formats is available to you. Furthermore, all this information you can usually find on the Web absolutely free. Once you learn how to properly stream audio you will have higher quality productions and you will know the purpose of each type of file reduction format.