Speaker Shop

When most people think of digital audio, they think of this one. MP3 is a lossy codec, which means when files are encoded to MP3, the encoder chooses some parts of the audio that it deems more important, and throws out other less important parts. This process results in very small audio files that are useable, but significantly degraded from the original file. Depending on the bitrate at which the file is encoded, more information can be kept or thrown out. This "lossy" nature, like all MPEG codecs, makes it an ideal candidate as a delivery format, meaning a format for mass consumption, rather than an archival format. MP3 doesn't require any kind of digital rights management, so most MP3s can be transferred to any device and be expected to play.

One alternative to MP3 is AAC, which stands for Advanced Audio Codec. AAC was designed to be the next step in performance from MP3, and accomplishes things like better quality audio at comparable size files. In general that translates into sound better than similarly bitrate MP3s. iPods can play AAC files back natively, and every track purchased in the iTunes Music Store is an AAC file. AAC can be utilized to support digital rights management, which is one of the reasons that Apple used it for the iTunes Store.

Most lossless audio comes from a method that 'maps' all the points on a sound wave from the original source bit-by-bit. The two main formats of choice for complete recording are WAV and AIFF. Both file formats do not use any form of compression, which means that the subsequent digital files tend to be extremely large, though the audio quality is much higher than any lossy codec.

One of the most popular 'lossless' audio codecs is the Free Lossless Audio Codec, commonly referred to as FLAC. FLAC is popular with the audio community, being the likely format used by most music servers, as the files created are smaller than WAV files, though the files still maintain all the audio fidelity of a WAV file.  FLAC files cannot be played back with most portable audio hardware, however.

There are a few options when using WMA, or Windows Media Audio. The first WMA codec is the lossy codec designed to go head-to-head with MP3. WMA Pro is an audio codec, which supports options for multi-channel audio, as well as offering greater resolution. WMA Lossless is a lossless codec, meaning the complete data from the original master is maintained; however, the audio is compressed to allow speed of transfer. WMA was created by Microsoft, with music services like Wal-Mart's online store, as well as Napster and Yahoo!'s music store all use WMA audio.