But for the most discerning listeners, even a tiny amount of lost information is unacceptable. Despite their lossy nature, these codecs can still deliver very high-quality audio. MP3 and AAC are the two most popular lossy audio codecs. This is known as lossy compression, because of the information that is lost in the process. While virtually all audio codecs make files smaller than the original source, some codecs achieve this space-saving by destroying some of the audible sound. The two biggest reasons to be passingly familiar with audio codecs are quality and compatibility. Why do I even need to know about audio codecs? Astell&Kern AK UW100 earbuds seen next to the company’s SR25 portable media player. Now that you know the difference between them, you can forget about the instructions part completely - from here on in, when we say the word codec, we’re going to be talking about audio file formats only. But because those instructions are baked deep into the software and hardware we use every day, like iTunes, a Roku device, or an iPhone, when most people say “codec,” what they really mean is “file format,” because that’s the part that’s visible to us when we look at the name of an audio file e.g. Technically speaking, a codec is the set of instructions for creating or reading a specific file format (like an MP3). It’s pretty common to hear someone refer to “using the MP3 codec,” or “FLAC is a better codec than MP3.” There’s a tendency to use “codec” and “file format” interchangeably. That saves a lot of room on a computer hard drive or in a smartphone’s memory, and it also saves on mobile data when you want to stream those songs from a music service. Here’s an example: If you take the audio on a CD and use a codec to turn those songs into MP3 files, you can reduce the size (in megabytes) of those tracks to as little as 10% of their original size. The most common reason for using a codec is to reduce the amount of information needed to store an audio (or video) recording. What does a codec do? Image used with permission by copyright holderĬodecs let computer hardware or software change information from one format to another (encoding) and also provide a way to work with the new format (decoding). Any kind of sound that can be recorded - from music, to a TV soundtrack, to your favorite podcast, can be affected by a codec. But for our purposes, we’re talking about audio. It’s two terms smashed together into one word - in this case, en code and decode - thus, “codec.”Ĭodecs can apply to video, too.
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