Types of audio files

OneWorld Radio – Online Audio Training

Types of audio files

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  Wav files
  
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  MP3
  
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  Real Audio
  

The size of an audio file influences how successful is your online listening going to be – if the file is too big, and your computer is not the best one can buy, you are not very likely to be able to use the facilities of radio online.

That is why MP3 and Real Audio formats are so popular - they enable the conversion of an ordinary audio file into the file of approximately same quality, but smaller in size.
When working on designing audio, you will come across 3 most typical audio formats - wav, MP3 or Real Audio.

1. wav files

Importing audio material from an external device into your computer is a process of digitising. The most common format for digitised files is wav. This file is not compressed, hence its size can be many megabytes, which makes that file unsuitable for using on the Web. Also, it takes a lot of disk space.

In order to reduce the size of a wav file, but to preserve the sound quality as much as possible, you can convert it into an MP3 or Real Audio file.

2. MP3

MP3 is fast becoming the industry standard for listening to audio files on the web. This is mainly because the audio files are highly compressed whilst retaining a high level of sound quality. For example a raw audio file of 36MB, will become a high quality MP3 of 3.6MB. You can squeeze around 10 hours of audio onto a CD (which usually only stores around one hour of audio).

In making MP3s 'perceptual' encoding is used, which means that only the sounds one can hear are saved while discarding the sounds human ear won't pick up. It makes the MP3s smaller but still very high quality.
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Want to know more about MP3?

There are lots of sites where you can learn about MP3 format in detail. We like:

- MP3.com - Find out about MP3 format, listen to music and many links to software sites.

- Wired News - Wired's online magazine - with tutorials and guides on how to use MP3 and much, much more...

- Shoutcast - Streaming MP3 audio site. Requires Winamp 2.05

- dailyMP3.com - Daily MP3 software updates

- mpeg.org - Reference site for MPEG and MP3 formats
- Webmonkey for user friendly explanations


P3 is an open standard, meaning –it’s available for free. Open standards win on the Internet and this is why even without any significant corporate backing, MP3 is already the de facto standard. There are more MP3 listeners, software programs, and hardware devices than any other CD quality audio format in the world.
MP3 is slang for "MPEG Layer-3". MPEG stands for "Moving Picture Experts Group," and refers to the experts who developed MPEG - a set of industry standards for digitally encoding video and audio information.
MPEG Layer-3 is the part of the MPEG standard that describes how to create and store high quality audio on a computer using very little space, and how to play it back with very high fidelity. MPEG Layer-3 audio files are often referred to as "MP3s", since each audio file is usually named with the three letter extension .mp3

3. Real Audio

Real Audio was developed by the computer company Real Networks in 1995. It was one of the first audio formats, and remains one of the most popular and versatile formats in use today. T

Want to know more about Real Audio?
Check out Real Networks for more information about the Real format, or go straight to their product site, real.com, to download their software.


hey developed a way of 'streaming' RealAudio – which means that the audio file starts playing 'as it downloads'. This means you don't have to wait for the whole audio file to download before you listen to it (so it's quicker and more accessible). But there is a drawback to 'streaming' – it means that your connection to the internet has to be continuous and if your connection goes down when you're listening to streaming audio, so does your audio feed.
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