Audio File Format - Format Types

Format Types

It is important to distinguish between a file format and an audio codec. A codec performs the encoding and decoding of the raw audio data while the data itself is stored in a file with a specific audio file format. Although most audio file formats support only one type of audio data (created with an audio coder), a multimedia container format (as Matroska or AVI) may support multiple types of audio and video data.

There are three major groups of audio file formats:

• Uncompressed audio formats, such as WAV, AIFF, AU or raw header-less PCM;
• Formats with lossless compression, such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio (filename extension APE), WavPack (filename extension WV), TTA, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, Apple Lossless (filename extension m4a), MPEG-4 SLS, MPEG-4 ALS, MPEG-4 DST, Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMA Lossless), and Shorten (SHN).
• Formats with lossy compression, such as MP3, Vorbis, Musepack, AAC, ATRAC and Windows Media Audio Lossy (WMA lossy)).