mp3, MP3 320, Flac, MP3 vbr,

[ProMaxx316]

While im listing to some music i run across a artist that has a free EP to download that has the other options to chose from as the topic title. Now when ever i DL a some from amazon or what not i see MP3. When music is played from head unit i see the 320 KBPS on the unit.

My question is what is the other formats and how do they differ???

On the 6 track ep the formats and file size are as follow

MP3 320 - 57.9MB

FLAC - 195.4MB

MP3 VBR (V0) - 47.8MB

AAC - 47.9MB

Ogg Vorbis - 38.7MB

ALAC - 180MB

[Noel989]

I would get flac that's the closets to wav. Which wav. Is the format that comes out of studio

[Tito DeLatorre]

flac is perfect quality.

[STEvil]

FLAC = Fully Lossess Audio Codec.

Full quality, period.

MP3 can be CBR or VBR (constant bit rate, variable bit rate). Constant encodes at a constant kb/sec regardless of the sound being encoded. Variable cuts out what is "dead".. its not perfect but is preferred over CBR as it preserves more of the original audio, most of the time. You can encode in any bit rate you choose. 128kb/sec, 192kb/sec, 256kb/sec, and 320kb/sec are the most common, with the higher numbers being better.

AAC, ALAC, and OGG are all lossy audio codecs like MP3. They work fine and are basically just alternatives.

[Baydestrian]

Well 320kbps is the highest bit rate for MP3's. Which is a compressed file compared to WAV & FLAC so it won't sound AS good but still sounds great. VBR means Variable Bit Rate, so instead of 320kbps CBR (constant bit rate) the bit rate will differ through out the song pretty much. I try to get 320kbps as much as possible nowadays.

AAC/M4A is the Itunes codec for audio files.

If you are a pure audiophile and you have the setup for it then you want WAV/FLAC but that also means large file sizes and you will probably need to put them on a USB stick and use that on your headunit in the car. If you are not too picky just stick with MP3/AAC (M4A) files, they will sound good and be a decent file size.

To note on what STEvil said, never go below 192kbps, esp 128kbps. I have lots of older files which are VBR and have weird bit rates like 172kbps or 145kbps. Also, I have not read that VBR preserves more the audio, 192-320 can produce the same sound as CBR and give you a bit smaller file size but 320 you know you are using all the data available and the file size just isn't that much bigger, like shown above only 10MB which is essentially the size of one 5min 320kbps song