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Audio Formats: Comparing and Contrasting the Formats

Posted By Paul\HellNoire In Category: Computer

May
11
2010

I was asked in the forum recently by one of our users, Luffy, to do a post on audio files. This is because I’ve been dropping a lot of formats recently, such as OGG, MP3, FLAC, WMA, etc, and it gets confusing which is which, which is the best, which could be considered garbage, and so on and so forth. I know there’s a multitude of formats out there, but this article can’t quite possibly cover all of them. What I am going to cover is MP3, OGG, FLAC, WMA, and WAV. Hopefully at the end of all this, you’ll have a base-line understanding of the different formats and can choose carefully between all of them and know each one’s strengths and weaknesses.


Let’s start with the one nearly everyone knows: MP3. It is considered a make-shift standard in the file sharing world, and most, if not all the music out there today is MP3 format. This is due to the fact that everything supports it. Linux, Windows, Macintosh, iPod, Cowon, even the kings of unsupported audio files, Windows Media Player and iTunes support it. And for good reason. It’s small file size comes from the chopping off parts of the music that our ears can’t hear, making it smaller and sound exactly how we’d suspect an artist would sound. The MP3 format is also known as MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, referring to how it is encoded. It is considered a lossy format, meaning you will loose audio data during data compression. You will also notice the audio quality loss when it is less then 80Hz and greater then 18KHz, but normally, you will not notice the quality loss due to most MP3s not being able to be found in those bitrates. While I admit I use the format at times, the majority of my music is in a different format, thanks to audio converters.

Ogg Vorbis is considered an open format by comparison to MP3. It is by default supported by Linux and some media players, such as AIMP2, but is not supported by Windows Media Player and iTunes, along with the mass majority of portable media players on the market today. However, I personally believe it’s perks are pretty good. Like MP3, it is a lossy format, but it is much smaller in size while sounding very decent. It can also be lossless, but I’ve heard reports that as a lossless format, it is not as good as FLAC. To give an example, my OGG music is encoded at 92 kps, the way you can tell it’s quality. With MP3, I’d have to use a 320 kps to have the same quality of music. And to boot, it’s also as I said above, much smaller. To look at an example, compare the Ogg download to the MP3 download of Brad Sucks. It is 51.81 mb to download the MP3 version, or about ten megabytes more if you download the OGG version which is a much higher bitrate version, meaning it should sound a lot better on your ears. It must be noted though, that Ogg itself is a container format, and if you look hard enough, you will find some video OGG files as well as the audio files.

If you really must have the best sounding music, and don’t care for file size, FLAC is the only way to go. My audiophile friends use this format, and I’ve heard a single track can run upwards of 100 megabytes. While it is huge, the bitrate reflects the truth: it is the closest thing to CD and Studio quality you can get. Only a few media players I know of, portable and installable support it, but when you hear the quality of it, you might not want to go back to your lossy music ever again. FLAC is a lossless format, and remains to this day the standard if you demand a top of the line music format. FLAC also supports what is called “Read-Write Compression”, and it’s default settings, from 1 through 8 control how large it is. A uncompressed FLAC file (1) runs usually at around 70 megabytes, while a highly compressed one (8) will run about 20 megabytes, with the average (4) compression coming in at 30 to 50 megabytes.

WMA is an unusual format, if you ask me. It is an audio format produced and nearly solely supported by Microsoft, and is a lossy format. It is a very hard format to find by many means but often is used as the format of choice by music stores that enforce Digital Rights Management (DRM for short). It is a decent sized format, and was developed as a competitor to MP3, however, never really took off in many circles. In all my music, I only have three WMA files, only due to the fact that they are DRM locked and I have to find a converter for them, which I have not found one yet for free. When I find one, I will certainly write about it though. Much like MP3, it is widely supported, though iPod and iTunes, as well as the Macintosh do not perfectly play all WMAs.

Finally, WAV is the last format that we will be covering in this post. It is a large file when it is uncompressed, and is rather hard to find in general, legally or not. It is mostly an lossless format usually used on your Windows computer as those system sounds, such as the Start Up sounds. Personally, I am of the believe that this format is dying out as time goes on, even though as a lossless format, it is of a decent size comprise between FLAC and MP3.

Now what would I recommend the common reader? Unless you have the dying need of top quality music and if your portable media player as well as the one on your computer supports it, I would personally use the OGG format. If you are just a normal user that needs something that works, MP3 would be the recommendation then, because it works everywhere I’ve ever tried. And if you have some dying need to hear everything that an artist had recorded on their CD, FLAC is literally the only way to go.


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    • anon1

      what about aac? (m4a,mp4)

    • Charlee

      Yup, FLAC is the only way to go if you want the best sound. I have converted all my CDs to FLAC and MP3s although my my MP3 player (SANSA Clip+) supports FLAC 8GB still doesn’t cut it for all the music I want to add in, so due to space limitation and more enjoyment to my music when I’m not at home, I put my MP3s in it and my FLACs for my computer use =).

    • VtD

      Indeed, there are lots of lossless audio formats besides FLAC, the most popular are APE, Apple Lossless, wavpack etc. It would be great to read their comparison in this blog.

    • http://the-rushart.blogspot.com RushArt

      How about eAAC+?
      Is OGG is better?

    • Zimbo

      Many thanks.

    • Suhas mk

      By the headline of the article, I kind of expected that you’d contrast AAC format too. Speaking of which, I play my music files in AAC format on my portable device. I don’t feel any considerable difference between MP3 or AAC as and when i play them on my portable device. However, with the latter one, the files are greatly compressed and i can add few hundreds of audio files into the limited space that my device gives me.
      Also, as I’ve observed, converting a file in MP3 format to AAC reduces its size by around 80%.

    • Paul\HellNoire

      @anon1, AAC is commonly seen with iTunes, and it’s a lossy audio type. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you use an iPod or a Mac, because there’s no point otherwise. It’s locked to iTunes most times and unless you use iTunes/iPod/iPad/iPhone/iMac, don’t use it. Enough said.

      @RushArt, see what I said above. OGG would be better as it’s more widely supported then AAC and derivatives.

      @VtD, lossless for the most part all sounds the same. It’s just who supports what that’s different. So there’s no point to doing a whole post for it. Sorry.

    • razor

      what about MP3pro?

    • Ahmad Saleem

      Thanks Paul, you make your way into our hearts with such great articles. Thanks for comparison, all the audio files, I have in MP3, I want to converter them in OGG and then check difference, BTW Thanks for your good comparison and outstanding post, unique post.

    • cristi

      I think AAC is better then MP3 an you can convert any audio file with winamp and other encoders. There are some phones that has aac as implicit audio file format and there are also movies with audio in aac. The point is that this format is used in almost all domains.

    • Dolph

      hey don’t forget about musepack is a open source lossy codec and works great for me @ standard quality setting which gives a smaller file size than mp3 @ -V2

    • http://www.malatidicalcio.it Doc

      Just a note for iTunes users: FLAC is not supported, but i think ALAC (Apple Lossless) is a good lossless format and it’s playable even on iPods!

    • mafia87

      Thanks paul for the info.. :)

    • kampongboy

      @Paul\HellNoire, what audio converters would you recommend?

    • HPKL

      You forgot WMA Lossless.

      It’s the lossless version of WMA. Though not as popular as FLAC or Apple Lossless, it has the advantage of file size, you can check it out yourself.

    • http://www.modthesmis.info The Smis

      Yup, FLAC is the only way to go if you want the best sound. I have converted all my CDs to FLAC and MP3s although my my MP3 player (SANSA Clip+) supports FLAC 8GB still doesn’t cut it for all the music I want to add in, so due to space limitation and more enjoyment to my music when I’m not at home, I put my MP3s in it and my FLACs for my computer use =).
      +1

    • vicky

      Well written.

      My bro’s all in for FLAC, but the main prob he has is that iphone does not support FLAC. I’ve looked up on Apple Lossless, and it seems FLAC is the better of the two. Any way we can get the same quality of FLAC on an iphone?

      P.S. comment follow up option would be appreciated here. :)

    • Paul\HellNoire

      @cristi, I’m afraid I disagree, 100%. AAC only works on the Apple line up of MP3 players, same goes with Apple Lossless. Ergo, useless to me. It is also not supported very well under Linux or Windows, only Mac really supports it, and iTunes. So I stand by what I said…. unless you’re an “i” user, you should be using something else, and if you are an “i” user, then you should be using something else, so iTunes doesn’t lock you in. If you support it, go for it…. you’ll never see me recommend it, EVER.

      @vicky, the only thing that could work is the Apple Lossless, which would be all I could recommend. Nothing more, nothing less, as it’s an Apple product.

      @HPKL,razor,Dolph I hasn’t heard of it, nor ran across any files of those types across the internet. I’d say it’s a rarity alright.

      @kampongboy, the one I was using was Free MP3 WMA convertor, which also supports OGG conversion: http://download.cnet.com/Free-Mp3-Wma-Converter/3000-2140_4-10442362.html

      @Suhas mk, I can’t cover them all, and I dislike Apple products, so I’ve never had to run across an AAC file. If you read my above comment directed at cristi… you’ll see my opinion.

    • Bakatonosama

      @Paul\HellNoire: I have a generic chinese mp4 player, and this support AAC.

    • Tks2k4

      Use Bonkenc for convert, it’s free.
      Easy CD-DA Extractor and other

      SMALL FILESIZE HIGH COMPRESSION :
      prefer OGG, -1 compression still good and small, just for backup all my music

      Nero Audio second choice ^^

      ===================

      other is WAV, Wavpack, MP3 VBR, AAC, FLAC

    • Merlin_Magii

      Respect ! I can’t remember the last time I had time to sit down and enjoy my music – so most of this article went over my head. BUT – saved the article, I have ! Thank you !

    • Dave

      Your description of WAV sounds a little odd. You mention “It is a large file when it is uncompressed”. (Is this a language/interpretation glitch?). My understanding of a WAV file is that is totally uncompressed with no loss whatsoever, hence the sound is exactly like the original, if ripped from a CD and would explain the huge file size. Surely this would be better than FLAC or any other format that modifies the file in some way, even though FLAC claims to be “lossless”?
      Incidentally, all this format comparison amounts to nothing if there is no high quality audiophile sound card/external box installed and fed into high-end hi-fi kit.

    • Seth

      Thanks for the article Paul.
      You mentioned converting mp3 back to ogg! in the previous comment.
      All these time i was under the impression once you convert to a lossy format you cant get it any better by converting it back to lossless. Am i right?

    • Rolf3000

      foobar2000 http://www.foobar2000.org/ plays it all and much more. Ape, Wv, aac, dts, m4a, mp4,… Realy every single codec – sometimes with additional components.
      Here are the very useful skins: http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/media/foobar2000/#

    • http://nonplus.us nonplus

      wow – so much misinformation!

      AAC is superior to MP3 in every way. Most notably: it does not low-pass filter high frequencies arbitrarily (you will never get above 18KHz with an MP3 file, no matter how high the bandwidth — very disappointing).

      WMA is a container similar to Quicktime in that it can hold anything up to and including multi-channel lossless audio. WMA lossless is equivalent to FLAC and WMA9 and above are pretty much the same as AAC.

      OGG is basically a poor man’s AAC. It’s a good algorithm but it isn’t great. One of my biggest disappointments with both it is it doesn’t support 24-bit audio. I switched to AAC from MP3 because the frequency response is better. I would switch to OGG because …no reason. It doesn’t do anything better than MP3. File sizes are a little smaller for equivalent “quality” but that’s hardly an issue with variable bit rate lossy compression.

      FLAC doesn’t really support 24-bit either. Support is there in the encoder, but many decoders don’t do it. Quicktime and WMA lossless both support 24-bit.

    • Shayesta

      Hey Raymond think you should mention about aacPlus. If you want I will be happy to give you samples of songs at 64 Kbit/s Stereo which absolutely kills WMA, OGG, MP3 at 192Kbit/s.

    • vaw

      @18

      “AAC only works on the Apple line up of MP3 players…”

      Sorry Paul, but I’m afraid I have to disagree. AAC is actually necessary if you own a Nintendo DSi or Wii, as they support only AAC. (Yep, they don’t even have MP3 support).

      Other devices that support AAC include:

      any portable player that fully supports the Rockbox 3rd party firmware
      Android phones
      Archos
      Creative Zen Portable
      LiveScribe Pulse Smartpen (records and stores audio in AAC format)
      Microsoft XBox 360
      Microsoft Zune
      Nokia S40 & S60
      Palm OS PDAs
      Roku Soundbridge
      some SanDisk Sansa models
      Sonos Digital Media Player
      Sony Ericsson phones
      Sony PlayStation 3
      Sony PlayStation Portable
      newer Sony Walkmans
      Squeezebox

      “It is also not supported very well under Linux or Windows, only Mac really supports it, and iTunes. So I stand by what I said…. unless you’re an “i” user, you should be using something else, and if you are an “i” user, then you should be using something else, so iTunes doesn’t lock you in. If you support it, go for it…. you’ll never see me recommend it, EVER.”

      Hmm… I guess you need to do a little more research, as what you just said is completely untrue. Almost all current computer media players include built-in decoders for AAC or can utilize a library to decode it. On Microsoft Windows, for example, DirectShow can be used this way with the corresponding filters to enable AAC playback in any DirectShow based player. Here’s a nice long list of some applications that support AAC:

      Audio Transcoder (Windows)
      CorePlayer (Mac OS X, Windows, and mobile platforms)
      Easy CD-DA Extractor (Windows)
      ffdshow (Windows DirectShow filter)
      foobar2000 (Windows)
      K-Multimedia Player
      Media Player Classic (Windows)
      MPlayer or xine (often used as AAC decoders on Linux)
      RealPlayer (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux)
      Songbird (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) (also supports DRM encoding used for purchased AAC music from iTunes Store with a plug-in)
      Sony SonicStage (Windows)
      VLC media player (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux)
      Winamp (Windows)
      Windows Media Player 12 (supports playback of AAC files natively)
      Rhapsody (supports RealAudio AAC, and offers subscription tracks encoded with AAC)
      XBMC (XBox Media Center)
      XMMS (Unix-like OSes) (supports mp4 playback with a plug-in provided by the faad2 library)

      “@Suhas mk, I can’t cover them all, and I dislike Apple products, so I’ve never had to run across an AAC file.”

      I don’t think you realize that Apple didn’t create the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format. Apple definitely brought mainstream attention to AAC when it announced that iTunes and iPod products would support songs in MPEG-4 AAC format (in 2003) though.

      “@cristi, I’m afraid I disagree, 100%.
      (cristi said: I think AAC is better then MP3 an you can convert any audio file with winamp and other encoders. There are some phones that has aac as implicit audio file format and there are also movies with audio in aac. The point is that this format is used in almost all domains.)”

      Well, I think I’ve already proved that you were wrong here, but just in case you also disagree 100% that AAC is better than MP3, well what cristi said is true. After all, AAC was designed to be the successor of the MP3 format as it generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates. Check this (it’s a PDF).

    • wantp

      Thanks for your information..

      BTW, regarding to your tag in this article, you didn’t tag “AAC” along with it. Dislike Apple =)

    • Paul\HellNoire

      To those tearing into me for my mistake on AAC, I’m sorry. As I said, I’ve never run into one.

      However, I will stand by what I said, and will not recommend it, rather, I’ll recommend OGG and MP3. Why? Because I’ve never had a problem with them. AAC, I have heard issues with for other people. Most people also use MP3 in the audio stores MINUS one or two. So you do have to admit, even if it is a more powerful format, it is not commonly used.

      At the same time, the MP3 players I have owned have never been able to play AAC, but I used to own a Creative Vision M Zen (now discontinued and died recently) as well as a Cowon iAudio9. I perfer OGG for it’s size compared to MP3, and if you’d like, you can send me all the links in the world to AAC… but I’ll be converting it as well to a different lossy format.

      Again, I’m very sorry, like I said in the post, I can’t cover everything. And as I’m saying here, I’ve heard about issues with AAC… as well as my stuff not supporting it. If you can prove it to yourself, that’s fine. There’s enough of you commenting on it saying it’s amazing to prove me wrong. No one is perfect, and I erred big time. But thank you one and all for correcting me. I didn’t expect everyone to be coming out of the woodwork to correct me though!

      @Seth, OGG can be lossy or lossless. I convert my MP3s to the lossy variation.

    • vonn

      @ everyone arguing about AAC and OGG -

      If you’re arguing about the quality an audio codec has, make sure your device’s output supports that kind of quality. If you look at that list of devices that vaw posted, the only ones that have a good enough frequency response for the quality to matter are hacked devices or the Sony X series (which I’m guessing falls into the category of “newer Sony Walkmans”). AAC may work on all those other devices, but why argue about quality you can’t hear(well)? I also have to doubt if you have a hacked player you’ll have the headphones to support the frequency range needed to make a difference. If you own a newer Sony, I can understand you owning a good set of headphones to match it.

      Now to compare AAC to OGG. OGG is just a container format, so I’m going under the assumption that everyone here is talking about OGG Vorbis (the actual codec). From personal experience my encodes of both codecs have had very similar file sizes. Both are better than MP3, a 320 of either file will sound much better then a 320 MP3; both with smaller file size. The main difference here is not how well the files are supported, but what supports them. AAC is pretty well supported, although not as widely on devices that can produce the top quality of the codec as OGG Vorbis.

      You can’t just say, “x is better than y.” It’s not that simple. What defines why one is better than the other is the use for it. When you’re just looking for a smaller size than MP3, it comes down to personal preference and experiance. If the settings you like give your AAC a better file size, use it. If your settings make OGG smaller, use that. But if you have the gear that can output the quality, then you’re probably looking at OGG because it’s better supported in that situation.

      tl;dr – Both are good. If you have good gear that supports quality, you’ll probably end up using OGG because it’s supported more on those kinds of things.

    • KAntae

      If you’re feeling like people are jumping all over you about the AAC thing, it’s because they’re probably all interpreting this article the same way, and maybe they have a point. The article itself and your comments later ignore and seem to dismiss AAC as if it were some unimportant/inferior, apple-only, niche product.

      That is hardly the case. The support for AAC is vastly superior both now, and in the forseeable future. Especially with hardware players, phones, etc. Partly because it’s more complex to decode/harder on the battery life of mobile devices, but mostly because manufactures are hesitant to embrace Ogg Vorbis without a clear picture of how it is affected by patents. AAC with H.264 is used in most all online/flash video websites, e.g. YouTube. Ogg is probably going to take a backseat to AAC/H.264 in HTML5 video because of their current online dominance, but also lack of support in future versions of Internet Explorer. Windows 7 comes with built-in support for AAC, btw. And if you’ve ever come across a *.mkv or *.mp4 file (huge in filesharing circles), it was probably using either AC3/DTS or AAC. And we all know that filesharing can totally make or break a particular codec, e.g XviD vs DivX. And with the introduction of high quality encoders, such as the one in iTunes and Nero AAC, the popularity of AAC has dramatically increased at audiophile/multimedia communities like Doom9 and Hydrogenaudio, while Ogg Vorbis has waned.

      But don’t take my post the wrong way, there’s nothing wrong with the recommendations in the article. There’s definately nothing wrong with Ogg (Vorbis) either, it’s one of the highest quality audio codecs there is. Maybe better than AAC, so there’s nothing wrong with using it for your personal audio collection. There are some quality encoders out there (aoTuV) for it. But I you would do everyone a disservice to dismiss AAC when it’s role at present, and in the future, are much bigger than Ogg.

    • http://www.ittech.cz.cc sunkumarspace

      i like it, it is my favourite zone thanks for this

    • kaolad

      we have a lot of harddisk spaces
      why we still want to compressed everything?

    • sirius

      @27 vaw
      +1

    • http://www.elstensoftware.com Dan Gravell

      Thanks for this Paul. ALAC, another lossless format which *is* supported on iTunes/iPhone/iPod/iPad has just been made open source, so maybe adoption will rise: http://alac.macosforge.org/

      Also, I wonder whether you’d be interested in writing a review of bliss ( http://blisshq.com/ ) for organizing music file and folder structures? Readers of raymond.cc who have large numbers of music files may find it useful. Get in contact via the methods at http://www.blisshq.com/contact.html

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