Thread: Best for storing lots of music with high-quality sound?

Which audio file format is best for storing lots of music with high-quality sound?

There are different types of audio formats to select from when saving music files. While a few formats sound better than others, the higher quality formats normally take more space on your hard disk. If you have many music files, you will advantage from using a compressed audio format that minimize the size of the files, while maintaining the fidelity of the audio.

The AIFF and WAV formats are comparable to CD-quality audio. These type support 16-bit, 44.1 KHz uncompressed stereo sound. While ripping a full-quality audio track from a CD onto HDD, it should be either of these formats.

However, if you would like to store numerous songs on HDD, one should select a compressed format like MP3 or AAC. These formats take up about one tenth of the space of AIFF and WAV files and sound is good. If your aim is to use the friendliest format, choose MP3, since this format is supported by nearly all music players.

Most music jukebox programs such as iTunes and Winamp permit you to select the bit rate of the audio files you import or convert. Such as, you possibly capable to import songs in MP3 format using a bit rate of 192 kbps. 128 kbps is frequently the default setting, but choose 192 kbps may provide the music an audible boost in quality. The greatest technique to verify what format and bit rate to use is to convert a couple songs, listen to them, and notice how much space they occupy. After that you can select the best balance between quality and size.