List of Formats
See also: Comparison of audio formats and List of codecs| File Extension | Creation Company | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 3gp | multimedia container format can contain proprietary formats as AMR, AMR-WB or AMR-WB+, but also some open formats | |
| act | ACT is a lossy ADPCM 8 kbit/s compressed audio format recorded by most Chinese MP3 and MP4 players with a recording function, and voice recorders | |
| AIFF | Apple | standard audio file format used by Apple. It could be considered the Apple equivalent of wav. |
| aac | the Advanced Audio Coding format is based on the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards. aac files are usually ADTS or ADIF containers. | |
| ALAC | Apple | Apple Lossless compression, a lossless compression format from Apple. |
| amr | AMR-NB audio, used primarily for speech. | |
| atrac (.wav) | Sony | the older style Sony ATRAC format. It always has a .wav file extension. To open these files, install the ATRAC3 drivers. |
| Au | Sun Microsystems | the standard audio file format used by Sun, Unix and Java. The audio in au files can be PCM or compressed with the μ-law, a-law or G729 codecs. |
| awb | AMR-WB audio, used primarily for speech, same as the ITU-T's G.722.2 specification. | |
| dct | NCH Software | A variable codec format designed for dictation. It has dictation header information and can be encrypted (as may be required by medical confidentiality laws). A proprietary format of NCH Software. |
| dss | Olympus | Olympus proprietary format. It is a fairly old and poor codec. Gsm or mp3 are generally preferred where the recorder allows. It allows additional data to be held in the file header. |
| dvf | Sony | a Sony proprietary format for compressed voice files; commonly used by Sony dictation recorders. |
| flac | File format for the Free Lossless Audio Codec, a lossless compression codec. | |
| gsm | designed for telephony use in Europe, gsm is a very practical format for telephone quality voice. It makes a good compromise between file size and quality. Note that wav files can also be encoded with the gsm codec. | |
| iklax | iklax | An iKlax Media proprietary format, the iKlax format is a multi-track digital audio format allowing various actions on musical data, for instance on mixing and volumes arrangements. |
| IVS | 3D Solar UK Ltd | A proprietary version with Digital Rights Management developed by 3D Solar UK Ltd for use in music downloaded from their Tronme Music Store and interactive music and video player. |
| m4a | An audio-only MPEG-4 file, used by Apple for unprotected music downloaded from their iTunes Music Store. | |
| m4p | A version of AAC with proprietary Digital Rights Management developed by Apple for use in music downloaded from their iTunes Music Store. | |
| mmf | Samsung | a Samsung audio format that is used in ringtones. |
| mp3 | MPEG Layer III Audio. Is the most common sound file format used today. | |
| mpc | Musepack or MPC (formerly known as MPEGplus, MPEG+ or MP+) is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 kbit/s. | |
| msv | Sony | a Sony proprietary format for Memory Stick compressed voice files. |
| ogg | Xiph.Org Foundation | a free, open source container format supporting a variety of formats, the most popular of which is the audio format Vorbis. Vorbis offers compression similar to MP3 but is less popular. |
| Opus | a lossy audio compression format developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and made especially suitable for interactive real-time applications over the Internet. As an open format standardised through RFC 6716, a reference implementation is provided under the 3-clause BSD license. | |
| ra & rm | RealNetworks | a RealAudio format designed for streaming audio over the Internet. The .ra format allows files to be stored in a self-contained fashion on a computer, with all of the audio data contained inside the file itself. |
| raw | a raw file can contain audio in any format but is usually used with PCM audio data. It is rarely used except for technical tests. | |
| TTA | The True Audio, real-time lossless audio codec. | |
| vox | the vox format most commonly uses the Dialogic ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation) codec. Similar to other ADPCM formats, it compresses to 4-bits. Vox format files are similar to wave files except that the vox files contain no information about the file itself so the codec sample rate and number of channels must first be specified in order to play a vox file. | |
| wav | standard audio file container format used mainly in Windows PCs. Commonly used for storing uncompressed (PCM), CD-quality sound files, which means that they can be large in size—around 10 MB per minute. Wave files can also contain data encoded with a variety of (lossy) codecs to reduce the file size (for example the GSM or MP3 formats). Wav files use a RIFF structure. | |
| wma | Microsoft | Windows Media Audio format, created by Microsoft. Designed with Digital Rights Management (DRM) abilities for copy protection. |
Read more about this topic: Audio File Format
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