There are many kinds of music formats, some of which are rare and cannot be touched at all. Here are some common ones to introduce:

1. MP3 format: The full name of MP3 is Moving Picture. Experts Group Audio Layer III. Simply put, MP3 is an audio compression technology. Since the full name of this compression method is MPEG Audio Layer3, people call it MP3 for short. MP3 uses MPEG Audio Layer 3 technology to compress music into a smaller file with a compression rate of 1:10 or even 1:12. In other words, it can compress the file to a smaller size with little loss of sound quality. To a small extent. And it also maintains the original sound quality very well. It is precisely because of the small size and high sound quality of MP3 that the MP3 format has become almost synonymous with online music. The MP3 format of music per minute is only about 1MB in size, so each song is only 3-4 megabytes in size. Use an MP3 player to decompress (decode) MP3 files in real time, so that high-quality MP3 music can be played. MP3 encoding quality is divided into: fixed bit rate (CBR), average bit rate (ABR) and dynamic bit rate (VBR).

Supplement: The maximum bit rate is 320K, and its shortcoming is that the high frequency part is one-size-fits-all. The sound quality is not high!

2. WMA format: The full name of WMA is Windows Media Audio, which is an audio format strongly promoted by Microsoft. The WMA format achieves a higher compression rate by reducing data traffic but maintaining sound quality. Its compression rate can generally reach 1:18, and the generated file size is only half of the corresponding MP3 file. This is very important for models that are only equipped with 32M. It supports WMA and RA formats, which means that the 32M space has been expanded by two times. In addition, WMA can also prevent copying through DRM (Digital Rights Management) solutions, or add restrictions on playback time and playback times, or even restrictions on playback machines, which can effectively prevent piracy.

Supplement: 128kbps is the optimal compression ratio of wma, 128kbps wma=192kbps mp3

3. WAV format: WAV format is a sound file format developed by Microsoft, also called waveform Sound files are the earliest digital audio format and are widely supported by Windows platforms and their applications. The WAV format supports many compression algorithms, multiple audio bits, sampling frequencies and channels. It uses a sampling frequency of 44.1kHz and 16 quantization bits. Therefore, the sound quality of WAV is almost the same as that of CD, but the WAV format requires too much storage space. It is very inconvenient to communicate and disseminate.

Supplement: Lossless format, disadvantage: very large size!

4. ASF format: The full name of ASF is Advanced Streaming Format. It is a media playback format developed by Microsoft and is suitable for playback on the network. Windows Media On-Demand Producer is a free software for creating ASF files, allowing even beginners to easily create ASF files using ready-made WAV or AVI files.

5. AAC format: AAC is actually the abbreviation of Advanced Audio Coding. AAC is an audio format jointly developed by Fraunhofer IIS-A, Dolby and AT&T. It is part of the MPEG-2 specification. The algorithm used by AAC is different from that of MP3. AAC improves encoding efficiency by combining other functions. AAC's audio algorithm far exceeds some previous compression algorithms (such as MP3, etc.) in terms of compression capabilities. It also supports up to 48 audio tracks, 15 low-frequency audio tracks, more sampling rates and bit rates, multiple language compatibility, and higher decoding efficiency. In short, AAC can provide better sound quality while reducing the size of MP3 files by 30%.

Supplement: One of the best lossy formats currently available. There are many encodings, faac and nero are common, with the highest bit rate 448kbps. In terms of hardware support, advanced MP3 and modern mobile phones are generally supported.

6. Mp3Pro format: Mp3Pro is an upgraded version of the Mp3 encoding format. MP3Pro was developed by the Swedish Coding Technology Company. It can also compress the file size of sound files to half the size of the original MP3 format while maintaining the same sound quality. And it can improve the original MP3 music sound quality without basically changing the file size. It can compress audio files at a lower bit rate while maintaining the pre-compression sound quality to the greatest extent. MP3pro can achieve complete compatibility. For files compressed by mp3Pro, the extension is still .mp3. Can be played on older mp3 players. Old mp3 files can be played on the new mp3pro player. It achieves what the company calls "forward and backward compatibility."

Supplement: The compressed format of mp3 can be thought of like this

7. VQF format: VQF format is an audio compression technology jointly developed by YAMAHA and NTT***. The compression ratio can reach 1:18, so under the same circumstances, the compressed VQF file size is 30% to 50% smaller than MP3, which is more convenient for online dissemination. At the same time, the sound quality is excellent, close to CD sound quality (16-bit 44.1kHz stereo). However, VQF has not disclosed technical standards and has not yet become popular.

Supplement: Rare

8. FLAC format: FLAC is the abbreviation of Free Lossless Audio Codec, which can be interpreted as lossless audio compression coding in Chinese. FLAC is a well-known set of free audio compression codes, which is characterized by lossless compression. Unlike other lossy compression codes such as MP3 and AAC, it does not destroy any original audio information, so it can restore the sound quality of music CDs. It is now supported by many software and hardware audio products. In short, FLAC is similar to MP3, but it is lossless compression, which means that audio will not lose any information when compressed in FLAC. This compression method is similar to Zip, but FLAC will give you a larger compression ratio, because FLAC is a compression method specially designed for the characteristics of audio, and you can use the player to play FLAC compressed files just like you normally play them. Same as MP3 files.

Supplement: It is a lossless format, which is larger than ape, but has good compatibility, fast encoding speed and wider player support

9. APE format: APE It is one of the currently popular digital music file formats. Different from lossy compression methods such as MP3, APE is a lossless compression audio technology, which means that after you compress the audio data files read from the audio CD into APE format, you can also compress the APE format files Restore, and the restored audio file is exactly the same as before compression without any loss. The file size of APE is about half that of CD, but with the popularity of broadband, the APE format has become popular among many music lovers. Especially for friends who want to transfer audio CDs through the network, APE can help them save a lot of resources. .

Supplement: It is a lossless compression format, which is smaller than flac. Encoding speed is slow.

10. MID format: MID is the abbreviation of midi and its extension. MIDI is the abbreviation of Music Instrument Digital Interface in English, which translates as "digital musical instrument interface", which means that its true meaning is the name of an interface for signal transmission by different devices. Our current MIDI music production all relies on this interface, and the information transmitted between this interface is also called MIDI information. MIDI was first applied to electronic synthesizers, an electronic musical instrument played with a keyboard. Due to the inconsistent technical specifications of early electronic synthesizers, it was difficult to link different synthesizers. In August 1983, YAMAHA and ROLAND Famous electronic musical instrument manufacturers such as , KAWAI and others jointly specified a unified digital musical instrument interface specification, which is the MIDI1.0 technical specification. Since then, various electronic synthesizers, electronic keyboards and other electronic musical instruments have adopted this unified specification. In this way, various electronic musical instruments can be linked to each other to convey MIDI information and form a true synthetic music performance system.

Due to the rapid development of multimedia computer technology and the powerful processing capabilities of computers for digital signals, it is natural for computers to process MIDI information. Therefore, many people now call MIDI music computer music. In fact, using multimedia computers can not only play, create and perform MIDI music in real time. You can even convert MIDI music into visible musical notation (staff or simplified notation) and print it out, and conversely, you can also turn the musical notation into beautiful music. Using this property of MIDI, it can be used in music teaching (especially music reading), allowing students to use computers to learn music knowledge and create music.

11. OGG format: The full name of Ogg should be OGG Vobis (ogg Vorbis). It is a new audio compression format, similar to existing music formats such as MP3. But one thing is different: it is completely free, open and patent-free. OGG Vobis has a very outstanding feature, that is, it supports multi-channel. With its popularity, it will not be a dream to use a Walkman to listen to DTS-encoded multi-channel works in the future. Vorbis is the name of this audio compression mechanism, and Ogg is the name of a project that intends to design a completely open multimedia system. Currently, only the OggVorbis part of the plan has been implemented. The extension for Ogg Vorbis files is .OGG. The design format of this file is very advanced. OGG files created now can be played on any player in the future, so the file format can continue to improve in size and sound quality without affecting older encoders or players.

Supplement: Currently one of the best lossy formats, MP3 is partially supported, and the software installed on smartphones can partially support it. The highest bit rate is 500kbps.

12. M4A format: M4A is the file extension of the MPEG4 audio standard. As mentioned in the MPEG4 standard, the common MPEG4 file extension is .mp4. The .m4a extension has become popular since Apple started using .m4a in its iTunes and iPod to distinguish MPEG4 video and audio files. Currently, almost all software that supports MPEG4 audio supports .m4a. The most commonly used .m4a file is the AAC format (file), but other formats, such as Apple Lossless and even mp3, can also be placed in the .m4a container (TC Note: The concept of this container is similar to the .mkv file). You can safely change the extension of an audio-only .mp4 file to .m4a so that it can be played in your favorite player, and vice versa.

13. eAAC+: The eaac+ format is a new generation of optimized music format for mobile phones. The extension of eaac+ is M4A. It can be close to CD sound quality and takes up less storage space than MP3 format.

14. AMR: AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) was proposed by the European Communications Standardization Committee and is the most widely used voice standard in mobile communication systems. MMS also adopts this format as a sound standard. Like ADPCM, AMR is not a specialized mobile phone ringtone format. AMR is a format widely recognized by major mobile phone manufacturers for saving mobile phone recordings.

Summary: Common formats for music lovers include flac, ape, wav, mp3, aac, m4a, ogg, wma

Lossless compression: FLAC, PAC, APE, WV

Lossy compression: AAC, MPC, OGG, M4A, MP3 (MP3Pro), WMA

The compression ratio is: aac>ogg>mp3(wma)>ape>flac>wav Same as Sound quality)

The dividing line between mp3 and wma is 192kbps. MP3 above 192kbps is good, and wma below is good.

Highest sound quality: wav=flac=ape>aac>ogg>mp3>wma (generally downloaded from online music websites, not downloaded casually from Baidu Sogou)

wav=flac=ape=wma >aac>ogg>mp3 Among them wma (lossless, but rare) wav is rare

Hardware support: MP3 player mp3>wma>wav>flac>ape aac ogg

Mobile phone mp3>wma>aac wav>flac ogg>ape