WAV (or WAVE), short for Waveform audio format, is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing audio on PCs. It is a variant of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in "chunks", and thus also close to the IFF and the AIFF format used on Macintosh computers. Both WAVs and AIFFs are compatible with Windows and Macintosh operating systems. It takes into account some differences of the Intel CPU such as little-endian byte order. The RIFF format acts as a "wrapper" for various audio compression codecs. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw audio.

Though a WAV file can hold compressed audio, the most common WAV format contains uncompressed audio in the pulse-code modulation (PCM) format. PCM audio is the standard audio file format for CDs at 44,100 samples per second. Since PCM uses an uncompressed, lossless storage method, which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality. WAV audio can also be edited and manipulated with relative ease using software.

Popularity

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As file sharing over the Internet has become popular, the WAV format has declined in popularity, primarily because uncompressed WAV files are quite large in size. More frequently, compressed but lossy formats such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis and AAC are used to store and transfer audio, since their smaller file sizes allow for faster transmission over the internet as well as lower disk space consumption. There are also more efficient lossless codecs available, such as Monkey's Audio, TTA, WavPack, FLAC, Shorten, Apple Lossless and WMA Lossless.

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