Talk:Audio file format

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Contents 1 Content confusion 2 Content confusion comment 2.1 ACT 3 External links 4 Value of ON content and quality of reference 5 Linked from Wired.com 6 What does this sentence mean? 7 What about .m4a and .aac? 8 No Speaker needed 9 Confusing negative 10 More Formats 11 FLAC vs PCM (or whatever Red Book audio is called) 12 Conversion

[edit] Content confusion

There appears to be some confusion as to the content of this page, the opening sentence (correctly, imo) describes an audio file format as a container format for audio data while most of the article discusses audio formats, i.e. compressed vs uncompressed data which is not necessarily related to the audio file format. Any comments on this? --80.44.213.35 19:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Content confusion comment

I agree with the comment about the confusion between file formats and audio encodings. Also, the article implies that Microsoft's WAV format always carries uncompressed PCM audio. In fact it can carry many encoding types. See for instance, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms713497.aspx and http://graphics.cs.uni-sb.de/NMM/dist-0.9.1/Docs/Doxygen/html/mmreg_8h.html Gobbag 16:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ACT

Gee, the article is "(Redirected from ACT (audio format)) with of course no mention of that format. Jidanni (talk) 22:56, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I suggest the removal of two of the three existing external links: "libsndfile" and "[1]". The former seems to be an advertisement and the latter is off-topic (contrary to the label). Can anyone give me a good reason why either of these should stay? Uriah923 19:33, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Value of ON content and quality of reference

The content added from the ON reference remains in this article, but the reference has been removed. This action is disputed and a conversation is ongoing here. Uriah923 06:13, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Linked from Wired.com

Just a note to the editors currently working on this article, it has been mentioned in an article from Wired News. [1] --Andylkl ^{[ talk! | c ]} 15:19, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

The multiple channel section in misinformative. To my knowledge, multiple channels are still created by two channels. The section suggests a 5.1 system. On the market today there are two ways to get 5.1 audio. DTS and Dolby, only the latter one is talked about.

[edit] What does this sentence mean?

Despite its name, there are many file formats for storing audio files.

How does its name discourge one from believing that there are multiple means of storage???

Probably because the title of the article is: Audio File Format, which is singular...not Audio File Formats

[edit] What about .m4a and .aac?

These two formats should probably be included, yes? Markhurst 21:41, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

And OGG? Oddity- 14:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No Speaker needed

I suggest dropping the reference in the intro to the "sampling of the votage corresponding to the speaker membrance position"

Where a speaker membrane is has nothing to do with sampling nor coding. A file never has to even "see" a speker to be created.

The reference just serves to confuse.RSFRASER 18:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Confusing negative

This article starts with the sentence, "The general approach towards storing digital audio formats is not to sample the audio..." The word "not" in here appears to be an error, but I will let someone more qualified make this decision.

Ed —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.126.24.175 (talk) 05:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC).

The "not" was added by an anonymous user, and was incorrect. I have undone that edit. The Wilschon 00:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More Formats

Can anybody add some more audio formats like .aa from audible?

[edit] FLAC vs PCM (or whatever Red Book audio is called)

I've read somewhere (but now of course, cannot find a solid reference to), that Red Book Audio actually stores two bits on physical media for every bit that is necessary to play. This helps in scrathes on the physical media (and is used to advantage in some DRM schemes). Basically CD players take the average of both of the bit values - or if one is unreadable, they use the other one. With that information you get a bit-stream avaiable to play on a speaker.

Now, I've heard that there's a audio file format (I believe it is FLAC - but I could be wrong), that says: Hey, we're storing shit digitally (and copying it), so we'll never have physical read errors - and storing two bits for every bit that we need to play is a serious waste of space. Let's just strip out half of that file and save one bit for each bit needed to play, and we'll work out other ways to backup our shit. So this file format basically reads like a CD player, averages, and outputs a single bit stream, which cuts the space needed in half, while giving you a true, lossless copy of the digital information on a CD.

But I'm not familiar enough with it, and can't (easily) find any sources to confirm this, and I'm not sure which file format it is.

What is the name of this file format. And for good measure, what's the name of the file format used on physical CDs? Besides Red Book Audio.

~ender 2007-11-30 23:13:PM MST

[edit] Conversion

How about some info on converting between formats Hrolls (talk) 11:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)