Multimedia Production

MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION 4(1+3)

Lesson 13: Multimedia Building Blocks - Audio

Audio file formats

Compatible audio file formats for multimedia

JThere are three major groups of audio file formats:

• Uncompressed eg, WAV,
• Lossless Compression Format eg, WMA.
• Lossy compression eg,MP3

AIFF Audio file	.aiff	Audio Interchange File Format This sound format originally was used on Apple and Silicon Graphics (SGI) computers. Waveform files are stored in an 8-bit monaural (mono or one channel) format, which is not compressed and can result in large files.
AU Audio file	.au	UNIX Audio This file format typically is used to create sound files for UNIX computers or the Web.
MIDI file	.mid or .midi	Musical Instrument Digital Interface This is a standard format for the interchange of musical information between musical instruments, synthesizers, and computers.
MP3 Audio file	.mp3	MPEG Audio Layer 3 This is a sound file that has been compressed by using the MPEG Audio Layer 3 codec, which was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute.
Windows Audio file	.wav	Wave Form This audio file format stores sounds as waveforms. Depending on various factors, one minute of sound can occupy as little as 644 kilobytes or as much as 27 megabytes of storage.
Windows Media Audio file	.wma	Windows Media Audio This is a sound file that has been compressed by using the Microsoft Windows Media Audio codec, a digital audio coding scheme developed by Microsoft that is used to distribute recorded music, usually over the Internet.