Polish.Audio file formats vs. sound quality.
The most popular audio file formats:
- .wav (wave form audio format):
- no compression,
- the biggest file size,
- no quality decrease due to compression,
- the best file format for sound processing,
- we can achieve the best results in digital sound processing,
- .wma (Windows Media Audio):
- audio files with compression by Microsoft,
- smaller file size than .wav,
- audio quality is dependent on compression level,
- .mp3 (MPEG-1/MPEG-2 Audio Layer 3):
- audio files recorded with compression,
- file size similar to .wma,
- audio quality is dependent on compression level,
- .amr (Adaptive Multi-Rate):
- strongly compressed audio coding scheme,
- the smallest file size,
- high compression rate = very low audio quality !!!
- You shouldn't use this file format if audio quality is important !!!
The best audio quality is provided with .wav file format.
Audio files like .wma i .mp3 having low compression rate allow us to keep relatively good audio quality. However when compression rate grows audio quality drops respectively !
.amr type files provide us with lowest audio quality and shall be avoided if we need good audio quality !!!
Voice recorder setup !!!
One shall set the highest recording quality on recording device to avoid audio compression ! If you set up "longest recording time" your recorder will use high level of compression to save recording memory space. As a result you will have a lot of audio data but with very poor quality which might be useless.
Preferred audio file parameters:
- min. sample resolution 16bits,
- min. sampling frequency 22kHz,
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