Audio converter is an audio conversion software for music file formats and audio resolution. The article about audio converter bases. What are lossy and lossless, compressed and uncompressed files.
File format is an inner structure of data into a computer file (mp3, wav, flac, mp4, m4a, ape, cda, ...).
Files formats are divided to lossy and lossless.
Lossless formats contain original audio stuff from recording studio without losses of sound quality. Example: wav, aiff, aiff-c/sowt, flac, ape, alac (apple lossless).
Lossy formats loss some "share" of original sound quality. Example: mp3, aiff-c, wav/µ-Law, mpeg4 (mp4), aac (m4a, mp4).
Lossy formats consumes lesser hard disk (or other storage) space than lossless ones.
Lossless formats are divided to compressed and uncompressed.
Uncompressed formats stored original audio stuff as is. Examples: wav, aiff, aiff-c/sowt.
Compressed formats stored original audio stuff after compressing without loss of sound quality. After restoring from lossless compressed formats we get original audio staff without any changing (bit-to-bit). Examples: flac, ape, WavPack (.wv), alac.
There is debate about whether FLAC keep sound quality. Theoretically must keep bit-to-bit.
Audio resolution is sample rate (44, 48, 88, ..., 192, ... kHz) and bit-depth (1, 16, 24, .... bit) of each sample (minimum particle) of digital audio (music) stream.
Yes. For any combination input and output sampling rates we have information loss. If we artificially add information (oversampling - increasing sample rate), we don't known true value added info anyway. See more oversampling and downsampling.
Yes. Information loss also. Except, we increase integer bit-depth value (convert 16 to 24 bit, or 16 to 32 bit). Converting 16 bit integer to 32 bit floating point has loss.
But converting 16 bit integer -> 32 bit floating point without any processing -> 16 bit integer is lossless. It possible for correct rounding.
1. Audio converter is software for changing resolution and storing format of audio files.
2. Audio files store full audio information or partially lost (less size).
3. Size of music files with full audio information possible decrease with lossless compressing.
Author: Yuri Korzunov
December 8, 2022 updated | since June 26, 2014
