The Best Audio Codec ACC is currently the best audio codec for professional broadcasting. We’ll likely see Opus getting wider use in the future.
Opus also has the added advantage of being royalty-free and open source.īoth iOS and Android now natively support Opus playback. It provides higher audio quality at all bitrates compared to every other codec listed here. Opus isn’t in wide use yet, but it’s considered a next-generation codec. The final audio codec we’ll take a look at is Opus. This codec was developed as an alternative to MP3 but has become somewhat of a niche product. WMAĪnother codec on the market, albeit one that is becoming less common, is WMA-Windows Media Audio. Like WAV, AIFF files are very large-around 10 MB for one minute of a standard audio recording. It stores uncompressed audio using the PCM (Pulse-Code Modulation).
AIFFĪIFF is a Mac format that’s similar to WAV.
It is known to be primarily used on Windows computers to store uncompressed audio in the LPCM format. WAV, which is short for “Waveform Audio File Format,” was originally released more than 25 years ago. It is supported by most video streaming platforms. It is a closed source format but is probably the most widely used audio codec on the internet today. The latest version of the standard is HE-AAC. AACĭeveloped a few years after MP3, AAC built on the success of that format but increased compression efficiency.ĪAC generally provides better audio quality at the same bitrate as MP3 or comparable quality at lower bitrates.ĪAC has been upgraded several times.
MP3 also helped push the era of portable digital music past the CD era by enabling iPods and other early “MP3 players.” It is still widely used today. Files were much smaller than the previous formats, allowing them to be streamed and downloaded over the internet. Originally introduced in the 1990s, MP3 revolutionized digital audio. The most well-known audio format is probably MP3, which is technically called MPEG-2 Audio Layer III. Let’s go over a few of the most common and best audio codecs. These are important considerations when it comes to deciding on the best audio codec for a given situation. Some provide better quality, while others focus on compression above all else. Some devices may support one audio codec, but not another. However, not all audio codecs are equally supported. There is a wide range of audio codecs available today. However, MP3 and ACC are the most common. There are several common audio codecs available for use. In short, an audio codec is a protocol for compressing digital audio to save space and for playing back with the video. To make a complex process very simple, this means reversing the math done during the encoding step. The second role of a codec is decoding, which is essentially playing back an audio file that has previously been encoded. This process involves a sequence of complex mathematical functions, but you can read a basic overview here. This encoding involves tossing out extra information to reduce file sizes while maintaining as much quality as possible. The first thing a codec does is encode an audio file. To make audio files smaller and easier to distribute, we use a codec. This provides very high quality but results in very large file sizes that aren’t practical for live streaming. “RAW” or uncompressed audio files are recorded using techniques that capture as much data as possible. The term codec is a portmanteau that combines the words “coder” and “decoder.” A codec is a standard or tool for encoding and decoding multimedia files. The word “codec” is short for “coder/decoder.”