An audio file format is a container format for storing audio data on a computer system. Despite its name, there are many file formats for storing audio files.

The general approach towards storing digital audio formats is to sample the audio voltage (corresponding to a certain position in the membrane of a speaker) in regular intervals (e.g. 44,100 times per second for CD audio or 48,000 or 96,000 times per second for DVD video) and store the value with a certain resolution (e.g. 16 bits per sample in CD audio). Therefore sample rate, resolution and number of channels (e.g. 2 for stereo) are key parameters in audio file formats.

Types of formats

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It is important to distinguish between a file format and a codec. Though most audio file formats support only one audio codec, a file format may support multiple codecs, as AVI does.

More on [ Audio file format ]

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