As of August 2019, there are 8 formats of audio files, as follows:

1. CD format:

In most playback software In "Open File Types", you can see the *.cda format, which is the CD audio track.

Features are: CD audio tracks can be said to be approximately lossless, so their sound is basically faithful to the original sound.

2. WAV format:

The sound file quality of WAV format is almost the same as that of CD. It is also a widely popular sound file format on PC. Almost all audio editing software "knows it" "WAV format.

Features are: "*.WAV" format supports multiple compression algorithms such as MSADPCM and CCITT A LAW, and supports multiple audio bits, sampling frequencies and channels.

3. MP3 format:

The MP3 format was born in Germany in the 1980s. The so-called MP3 refers to the audio part of the MPEG standard, which is the MPEG audio layer.

Features: There are many sampling frequencies for compressed music in MP3 format. You can use a sampling frequency of 64Kbps or lower to save space, or you can use a standard of 320Kbps to achieve extremely high sound quality.

4. MIDI format:

MIDI comes from the word (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). MIDI allows digital synthesizers and other devices to exchange data. The MID file format is inherited from MIDI.

Features are: MID files are mainly used for original musical instrument works, amateur performances of popular songs, game soundtracks, and electronic greeting cards. The playback effect of *.mid files completely depends on the level of the sound card.

5. WMA format:

WMA is the same as the VQF format developed by Japan's YAMAHA company. It achieves a higher compression rate than MP3 by reducing data traffic but maintaining sound quality. .

Features are: high-fidelity sound pass-band bandwidth, better sound quality, tough background, sound quality better than MP3 format, and far better than RA format.

6. VQF format:

Yamaha’s other format is *.vqf, but due to poor publicity, this format is difficult to use. *.vqf can be played with Yamaha's player.

The characteristics are: the core is to achieve a higher compression ratio by reducing data traffic but maintaining sound quality. It can be said that it is also very advanced technically.

7. FLAC format:

FLAC is the abbreviation of Free Lossless Audio Codec, which can be interpreted as lossless audio compression coding in Chinese.

Features are: 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.

8. APE format:

APE is one of the popular digital music file formats. Unlike lossy compression methods such as MP3, APE is a lossless compression audio technology.

The feature is: after compressing the audio data files read from the audio CD into APE format, you can also restore the APE format files, and the restored audio files are exactly the same as before compression, no any loss.

Baidu Encyclopedia—Audio