Digital audio is a very popular way to listen to music now, thanks to
the recent improvements in personal computer technology. From the
popular and sometimes controversial mp3, to the real time streaming real
player media, digital audio formats have taken the music world by storm.
Now, it is easy to listen to, share and edit music right at home on your
personal computer. From the youngest child to the oldest senior,
people all over the world are listening to any music they want to, whenever
they want, much cheaper than before. Digital audio has also opened
up paths to upcoming musicians, using the computer to edit tracks, record,
and share music over the Internet. However, all digital audio is
not created equally. There are many different factors, such as quality
and size that effect ones decision of a favorite type of digital audio.
The most popular types of digital audio are Mp3, wav, AIFF, midi and real
player. Each of these five file types has differences that make each
useful in certain ways.
Mp3 audio, short for motion pictures expert group is the most
popular mainstream file type on computers today. Mp3 uses compression
to make files smaller while still retaining good quality. For example,
a 30 of 40-megabyte file on a CD, in AIFF format, is condensed to about
10% of its size when converted into an mp3, making it about 3 or 4 megabytes.
On average, about one megabyte of mp3 is worth roughly 1 minute of music.
Mp3’s are good quality, but not quite to the level that CD files are at
currently. An active listener can differentiate between an Mp3 and
an AIFF file in the first seconds of the song.
Mp3 audio is the most popular file type of digital audio for
sharing music over Internet. This is not necessarily a good thing
for the artist, however, as displayed through countless lawsuits relating
to Mp3’s and their distribution. Due to their small size and versatile
nature, they are easy to spread quickly from one peer to another.
The most popular lawsuit consisted of many popular music groups, most notably
Metalica, suing the creator of Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer
sharing applications. Napster is just an example of ways to share
digital audio P2P.
The second popular type of digital audio file is the wav file.
Windows Wave files are the native digital audio files for windows.
However, wav files do not play natively on other operating systems, such
as Macintosh or Linux. There are ways to play wav files on other
operating systems, but these techniques are not openly obvious to the average
computer user. Wav files are better quality than Mp3’s, but are also
much larger in file size. This is why they are not as popular as
Mp3’s. Wav is the type of file that audio is recorded into, so many
computer-recorded audio starts in this form, but is later converted.
Like wav, Apple Macintosh computers have a native digital audio file
type. This digital audio file type is called AIFF. AIFF is
short for Audio Interchange File Format. On a computer, an AIFF file takes
up much more space than an Mp3, but is also better quality. If one
wanted to put the contents of a CD onto their Macintosh personal computer,
they would need to upload the file as an AIFF, then convert it into Mp3
to listen to it on the everyday Mp3 player. Because AIFF is native
to Macintosh only, it took a similar route as wav files did, and became
obsolete due to the versatile Mp3 file type. AIFF is still used in
applications such as Apple’s new audio recording and editing program called
Garage Band. This makes AIFF similar to wav again, because many recorded
audio files on Macintosh start in this type of file.
Ra, or real player audio file, can be played only by a version of real
player, the player of a company that basically controls the entire streaming
audio and video market. Streaming audio is live music that is sent
directly to your personal computer, with little or no delay. In order
to listen to real audio, one needs to have a “plug-in” installed on their
Internet browser. Most personal computers come with this helper application
pre-installed. There are disadvantages to real audio, though.
One is that you need to be connected to the Internet in order to view of
listen to streaming real audio. A file downloaded while connected
to the Internet could not be listened to if the computer is disconnected.
Another disadvantage is the quality of sound, which is greatly depleted
when it is broadcasted live.
MIDI is a very unique type of digital audio file. MIDI stands
for musical instrument digital interface, and is basically just that.
This file type provides a chance for musicians to compose music on their
personal computer, and use digital musical tones and timbres to carry this
out. An advantage of this is that musicians can compose music that
could be impossible to play or perform in real life. It also allows
musicians to layer tracks, making complicated and intricate music easy
to created with only two hands and one brain. Many digital audio
songs such as ring tones and background music for web sites is created
in MIDI format. It is not used to play real music, such as Mp3 of
WAV, which is why it is lesser known among the non-musicians. MIDI
is high quality for its purpose, however it is not used to create music
that is meant to pass as real musicians performing.
With each of these five types of digital audio, there is a player that
is required to play the music on the computer. Mp3 players are everywhere,
but the most common ones are Apple’s iTunes and Windows Media Player, both
their respective native media player. ITunes is growing and is on
pace to become the most popular Audio player for personal computer users
on both the Window’s and Macintosh platforms. Along with being a
versatile media player, iTunes is also a music store, online radio (similar
to real player), CD player and network music sharer. Wav and
AIFF digital audio file types are also played through these media players.
Real player streaming audio files can only be played using the Real Player
audio program, which cannot play any other type of digital audio file type,
but is installed on almost every personal computer in America.
Digital Audio is a relatively new technology that is being used everywhere
all over the world to spread play and record audio quickly and cheaply.
This technology is now an everyday occurrence in people’s lives, if we
realize it or not. Personal Mp3 players are making CD and CD players
obscure, and will probably kill them all together. Digital audio
is a welcome technology, however, and will be in our lives for a long time.
Works Cited
Lipscomb, Eric. “Introduction to MIDI.” MIDI Basics. 1995 to 2004. Midi World. December 5, 2004. http://www.midiworld.com/basics.htm#intro
Maguire, James. “Converting Sound Files: the Format Wars” Converting Sound Files. About: Top 40. December 5th, 2004. http://top40.about.com/library/weekly/aamp3convertingsoundfiles.htm
Price, Nancy. Audio File Format Comparison. University of Wisconsin.
December 5th, 2004. <http://www.uwm.edu/People/price/Audio_file_format_comparison.html>