What is a WAV File?

WAV is one of the most common sound file formats. It is a standard digital audio file developed by Microsoft specifically for Windows. This file can record a variety of mono or stereo sound information, and can ensure the sound is not distorted. But a fatal disadvantage of a WAV file is that it takes up too much disk space (about 12 megabytes of disk space per minute of music). It conforms to the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) specification and is used to save audio information resources on the Windows platform. It is widely supported by the Windows platform and its applications. The Wave format supports MSADPCM, CCITT A-law, CCITT -law, and other compression algorithms. It supports a variety of audio digits, sampling frequencies, and channels. It is the most popular sound file format on a PC; Short sound clips. ^[1]

WAV files are common and most classic multimedia audio files on the PC platform. They first appeared on the Windows 3.1 operating system in August 1991. The file extension is WAV. It is short for WaveFom and is also called a wave file. You can directly store the sound waveform, and the restored waveform curve is very realistic. WAV file format for short. WAV format is a digital audio format that stores sound waveforms. It was jointly designed by Microsoft and IBM. It has been revised several times and can be used for

The sound wave from the sound source is converted into a continuously changing electrical signal through the microphone. After amplification and anti-aliasing filtering, sampling is performed at a fixed frequency. Each sample is the amplitude of the electrical signal detected within a sampling period. It is then quantized from the analog electrical signal to an integrated value represented by a binary number; finally it is encoded and stored as audio stream data. In order to save storage space, some applications need to compress the sampled data before storage. ^[2]

In the Windows environment, most multimedia files store information in accordance with the Resources lnterchange File Format, referred to as

The encoding includes two aspects, one is to store the data in a certain format, and the other is to use a certain algorithm to compress the data. The WAV format has no hard code for audio stream encoding. It supports non-compressed PCM (Puls Code Modulation) pulse code modulation format. It also supports compressed Microsoft Adaptive Differential Puls Code Modulation (ADPCM), international telegram. The speech compression standards ITU G.711a-law, ITU G.711-law, IMA ADPCM, ITU G.723ADPCM (Yamaha), GSM 6.10, ITU G.721 ADPCM encoding and other compression algorithms developed by the International Telegraph Union. MP3 encoding can also be used in WAV. As long as the corresponding Decode is installed, MP3 music in WAV can be played.

Sampling frequency : The number of times audio data is collected per second.

Generally speaking, the larger the sample size (information amount) of the sample, the higher the sampling frequency, the better the sound quality, but the larger the overhead of the waveform audio. Because general speech can be better restored with 8-bit 11.025KHz sampling, waveform audio is generally suitable for the following occasions:

1. The sound to be played is a speech voice, and the music effect does not place high requirements on the sound quality.

2. Where sound and other data need to be loaded from the CD-ROM drive at the same time, the transmission of sound data cannot be exclusive of processing time.

3. When the sound data that needs to be stored in the PC hard disk is less than 1 point and the available storage space is sufficient. ^[4]