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Audio codecs are the libraries that are executed in multimedia players. The audio codec is actually a computer program that compresses or decompresses digital audio data according to the audio file format specifications.
Microsoft and IBM introduced the format in 1991 for use in the Microsoft Windows 3.1 operating system (OS). Long before digital audio became a staple, computer users were exposed to the WAV file as an embedded sound file that played a chime-like sound at boot up of the Windows operating system.
This file format is based on the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), which stores audio files in indexed “chunks” and “sub-chunks.”
Audio Formats can be broken down into three main categories:
Uncompressed formats, lossless compression formats, and lossy compression.
THE NAME
MPEG is the acronym for Moving Picture Experts Group. This group has developed compression systems used for video data. For example, DVD movies, HDTV broadcasts and DSS satellite systems use MPEG compression to fit video and movie data into smaller spaces. The MPEG compression system includes a subsystem to compress sound, called MPEG audio Layer-3. We know it by its abbreviation, MP3.
(often referred to as PCM formats) are just as the name suggests — formats that use no compression. This means all the data is available, at the risk of large file sizes. A WAV audio file is an example of an uncompressed audio file.
will result in some loss of data as the compression algorithm eliminates redundant or unnecessary information — basically it tosses what it sees as irrelevant information. Lossy compression has become popular online because of its small file size, it is easier to transmit over the Internet. MP3 and Real Audio files uses a lossy compression.
applies compression to an uncompressed audio file, but it doesn't lose information or degrade the quality of the digital audio file. The WMA audio file format uses lossless compression.
The MP3 format is a compression system for music. The goal of using MP3 is to compress a CD-quality song by a factor of 10 to 14 without noticeably affecting the CD-quality sound. With MP3, a 32-megabyte song on a CD compresses down to about 3 MB. This lets you download a song much more quickly, and store hundreds of songs on your computer's hard disk.
An audio file format and audio codec (compressor/decompressor) are two very different things.
Stands for Waveform Audio Format. This is a high-quality audio file type generally used for applications that require high quality, such as CDs. WAV files are uncompressed, and therefore take up some disk space, unlike MP3s or AACs, which are compressed.
Because WAV files are uncompressed, they contain more data and produce better, more subtle, and more detailed sounds.
A WAV file generally needs 10MB for every 1 minute of audio, whereas an MP3 needs about 1MB for every 1 minute.
The Wave file format is Windows' native file format for storing digital audio data. It has become one of the most widely supported digital audio file formats on the PC due to the popularity of Windows and the huge number of programs written for the platform.
by: Darwin Paul B. Tuazon
The WAV file had two very big things going for it when introduced.
First, it could digitize sounds 100% faithful to the original source because it is a lossless format. “Lossless” means that the file format does not compromise audio quality even when it holds compressed data.
Second, the format is very easy to edit and manipulate with software.
While this format was ideal for sound effects, it had a drawback when it came to music files. One four-minute song could easily consume over 35 megabytes (MB) of space when saved as a WAV. Though the cost of hard drives dropped over the years, the format was still too large for portable players with limited flash memory, which would become ubiquitous by the new millennium. Additionally, these files were not the most practical format to transfer online, especially over slow dial-up connections.
Today, the WAV file format is still widely used to archive music files in a lossless format where space is not an issue. Some CD and DVD players can also read these files when they are saved directly to a disc. More often, software that burns the files to CD will convert them in the process to the Compact Disk Audio (.cda) format, making the audio CD compatible with all players.
AMR stands for Adaptive Multi Rate. AMR is a common audio format for various mobile devices such as cell phones and even VoIP kind of applications. In 1998 it became the standard speech codec. File extension is .amr.
There are essentially two AMR format standards which are AMR-NB and AMR-WB.
The first one (AMR-NB), is a narrowband version which is commonly used in situations where low bitrates are sufficient -- such as a basic voice recording facility you may have on your MP3 player. The frequency range used for AMR-NB is 300-3400 Hz which is capable of producing sound quality that is comparable to traditional telephone. This narrowband version uses the following bitrates:
The second version of AMR is the wideband type which is represented by the acronym, AMR-WB. As the name would suggest, this is an enhanced vocoder that uses a wider bandwith than AMR-NB in order to store voice at a much higher quality -- the frequency range used is for this is 50 -7000 Hz. The bitrates used for the wideband version of AMR are:
04.75 kbps
05.15 kbps
05.90 kbps
06.70 kbps
07.40 kbps
07.95 kbps
10.20 kbps
12.20 kbps
06.60 kbps
08.85 kbps
12.65 kbps
14.25 kbps
15.85 kbps
18.25 kbps
19.85 kbps
23.05 kbps
23.85 kbps
Compared to WAV, AMR files are much smaller in size but are of good quality. AMR is well supported by most of modern mobile telephone handsets.
Due to its higher frequency range and therefore superior speech quality, AMR-WB is optimized for use in GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) technologies -- otherwise known as 2G and 3G mobile networks respectively.