Audio formats and file types are two concepts you’ll encounter throughout your music production journey. As a bit of context, the audio universe has a wide variety of audio file types classified under three main groups. These are uncompressed, lossless, and lossy. Just for starters, there are essential differences between compressed and uncompressed audio file types. Also, it is important to understand that some compressed or lossy audio formats discard audio information in order to reduce the file size. When you compress a file, it significantly decreases its size as it distributes its content more evenly. A common example of this are MP3s.
Don’t Lose Sight Of This
When the producer uses a lossy compressed audio source, such as MP3 or AAC, the effect might damage the file or make the processing useless. In order to prevent such effect from appearing, the producer should try to maintain the compressed audio source intact from the very beginning. Nowadays, it is important to deliver the original audio file to mixing and mastering engineers in an uncompressed format.
Audio Formats and File Types: Bits
It’s essential to know the basics of sample rate, bit rate, and bit depth when dealing with audio file formats. The sample rate is basically the number of times the audio samples per second. One measures the sample rate in Hertz (Hz), a unit of frequency that describes cycles per second. The quality of sample rates ranges from 8,000Hz to 192,000Hz. Extremely high sample rates deliver a huge file that, most of the times, the human ear cannot perceive as different.
Both bit rate and bit depth are essential components of digitized sound. On the one hand, bit depth is basically the number of bits of information that each sample contains. This number corresponds to the resolution of each sample. On the other, bit rate is the number of bits within a unit of playback time to represent audio and describes the character of the sample.
Audio Formats and File Types: a Last Bit of Advice
When using lossy formats, sound engineers can customize the degree to which the MP3 will maintain or lose information during the encoding and compression process. You can do this by tweaking the bit settings. Lower bit rate means the encoder will discard more audio data during the compression process, which will directly affect the audio quality on playback.
