Comparison of audio formats

Dec. 16, 2010 - PRLog -- We carried out spectral analysis of the popular audio formats including: FLAC, WAV (uncompressed, lossless) and MP3, OGG (zipped) set at the highest extract from the CD.

Tools and test configuration:

1. Software extract audio free Exact Audio Copy, the latest version (V0.99 Prebeta 5).

2. CD When Christmas Comes To Town- Matthew Hall and Meagan Moore, by resolutely carry out the recording studio.

3. The free audio software Audacity.

4. Computer configuration: Windows XP SP3, Asus DVD-E616A3, Intel Core 2 CPU 6300 1.86 GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM.
Implementation:

Use Exact Audio Copy to extract, "track 02" CD out of four formats: FLAC, WAV, MP3 and OGG. With the MP3 format, we use the popular LAME codec and the Ogg Vorbis format; and use oggenc2.87-1.3.2-generic codec. Track 2 of CD Christmas is "When Christmas Comes to Town”. The reason for choosing this song as much music and flute accompanied by guitar, the instrument should have less easy to distinguish the difference in quality than many instrumental tracks. And be clearer, we only analyze a few points in the first 10 seconds of this track 2 format among each other.

Results:
We use our free tool Info Media to check the extracted files. As you can see, two uncompressed WAV and FLAC files have information similar to the specification of audio CDs, audio in 16-bit sampling at 44.1 kHz. MP3 and OGG are taken samples at the highest quality MP3s at 320Kbps and OGG at 500Kbps. In terms of capacity, you also note that the time of this song is 4 minutes 20 seconds, in MP3 format takes only 9.92 MB, OGG- 14.3 MB, FLAC and WAV - 29.5 MB and 43.7 MB. Therefore, MP3 save 77.3% capacity compared to WAV, OGG savings of 67.3% and FLAC-32.5%.
And now, we compare the analysis results of these four formats.
With the results in the spectrum in 10 seconds of the first song "When Christmas Comes to Town", we easily see that there is little difference among the formats.

Look on the spectrum, pay attention to upper floors (with blue markings) to be distinguishable. Show the frequency spectrum from 172Hz to 7 KHz. In the first 10 seconds of this music has just guitar and flute so they make sound quite "clear." We only pay attention to negative stories in about 5KHz to 7KHz to distinguish. The guitar is dark red stripes and red blur behind are traces echoes of guitar and flute. Moreover, the patterns of red can be any noise or unwanted sound signals sent by any command causes and effects in the compression process, the data processing. And the sound quality will show patches of blue, less "noise" over.
Comparison between WAV and FLAC:

As you can see, WAV and FLAC have some differences but the marked in the figure is the most recognizable (you use two arrow keys to browse to-fro image for easy identification). The important thing is FLAC gives the sound clearer than WAV and has the storage capacity 32.5%.
Comparison between MP3 and OGG:

With 2 compression format: MP3 and OGG in highest quality, we easily see in two different formats. MP3 is "nosier" than OGG although this difference is not really much. In the mid-frequency sound spectrum (3KHz-4KHz), OGG audio signal processing medium dull sounding like MP3 audio while high levels of MP3 is not "clearer" with OGG.

Reviews:
MP3 is still effective about capacity, but they don’t create more impressive in the original records, while OGG is quite suitable if you want to get better sound quality to compressed audio formats. While those who actually care about the sound quality, the FLAC uncompressed format is more appropriate than WAV because FLAC can keep sound quality and has a smaller storage capacity.

In addition, several audio formats present significant other. For uncompressed formats, Apple launched Apple Lossless (ALAC), Monkey's Audio format (. Ape) ... With the compression format, besides MP3 and OGG popular, AAC is also popular format and is gradually being used more for video.

With digitizing your CD collection, the choice of format to fit depending on many factors, such as mobile device you use, storage capacity, and sound quality ... You just have to choose the format that matches your requirements.

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