Common Audio File Formats
AAC
AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) refers to digital audio coding standard that represent audio files based on lossy audio compression. It was launched as successor of MP3 file format. AAC achieves better sound quality as compared to MP3 at the same bit rate. The format was adopted as default media format by YouTube, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple iTunes and several other platforms.
WMA
A .WMA file is a Windows Media Audio file. WMA is an acronym for Windows Media Audio. The files that contain the .wma extension are audio files that are used mostly for music. The WMA file format is proprietary to Microsoft. WMA files are compressed, similar to MP3 files. A lossless version of WMA does exist (WMA-L), but most WMA files use a lossy compression system.
MP3
The MP3 format is a compression system for music. The goal of using MP3 is to compress a CD-quality song by a factor of 10 to 14 without noticeably affecting the CD-quality sound. With MP3, a 32-megabyte song on a CD compresses down to about 3 MB. This lets you download a song much more quickly, and store hundreds of songs on your computer's hard disk. MP3 files are commonly used to store audio tracks, podcasts, lectures, sermons, and audiobooks.
OGG
An OGG file is a compressed audio file that uses free, unpatented Ogg Vorbis audio compression. It is similar to an .MP3 file, but sounds better than an MP3 file of equal size, and may include song metadata, such as artist information and track data. OGG files are supported by many software music players and some portable music players.
Vorbis is the most popular and common type of .ogg file, but there are numerous others. In addition to the .ogg extension, you may also see .ogv, .oga, .ogx, .ogm, .spx, and .opus.
FLAC
A FLAC file is an audio file compressed in the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) format, which is an open-source lossless audio compression format. It is similar to an .MP3 file, but is compressed without any loss in quality or loss of any original audio data.
ALAC
The ALAC file extension is short for Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC). These files use M4A format because ALAC is a codec used for encoding audio data and not an audio file container format like an MPEG-4 file. These are audio files used for storing digital music in lossless format without losing any sound quality from the original audio data.
WAV
A WAV file is a raw audio format created by Microsoft and IBM. The format uses containers to store audio data, track numbers, sample rate, and bit rate. WAV files are uncompressed lossless audio and as such can take up quite a bit of space, coming in around 10 MB per minute with a maximum file size of 4 GB.
WAV files are generally going to be much larger than other popular audio file types, like MP3, due to the fact they are typically uncompressed (compression is supported, though). Because of this, they’re mainly used in the professional music recording industry to retain the maximum quality of audio.
AIFF
An AIFF file is an audio file saved in the Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF). It contains high-quality audio saved in an uncompressed, lossless format. AIFF files may also be saved as .AIF files or .AIFC files (if they are compressed).
Unlike .MP3 files, AIFF files are uncompressed. Because AIFF files' data is not compressed, AIFF files typically contain higher-quality audio than similar MP3 files. However, the files also take up more disk space since they contain more data.