The digital audio format
The emergence of the digital audio format has completely revolutionised the music industry and also the music landscape. Digital audio playback became popular with the advent of the CD in the 1980s and later with the advent of digital streaming music platforms such as Spotify, Tidal and others.
Digital music files can be transferred very easily between electronic devices. This allows users to enjoy their favourite music tracks easily and conveniently wherever they want. This sound is stored, processed and played back on the various digital media.
Types of digital audio formats
The most common and widely used digital audio formats are:
WAV (Waveform Audio Format): The WAV audio format is the digital waveform audio format developed by IBM and Microsoft. It was created for Windows 95 applications which made it the standard audio format. Audio files in this format end with the extension .wav.
AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format): A format developed by Apple Computer for the purpose of storing high quality audio files. The extension for this file type is .aiff.
WMA (Windows Media Audio): Compressed format developed by Microsoft. Similar to MP3. Audio files in this format use the .wma extension and can only be played from Windows.
MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3): Currently the most widely used compressed format. It was developed by a group of engineers in a digital sound research programme. The extension for this file type is .mp3.
Advantages of digital audio format over analogue audio format
The main advantages of the digital audio format over the analogue audio format are:
Lower cost compared to an analogue system.
Any part of the recording session can be accessed immediately without any problem.
It is portable.
Data can be cloned and sent for further mastering and recording.
