What is the WAV file?

Wave audio file, also known as the wave or simply WAV after its extension, is a common type of audio file. Microsoft and IBM introduced the format in 1991 for use in the Microsoft Windows 3.1 (OS) operating system. Long before the digital sound became the foundation, computer users were exposed to WAV file as an embedded audio file that played bell sound when you start the Windows operating system.

This file format is based on file format format (RIFF), which stores audio files in indexed "pieces" and "subcunks". Riff is based on an earlier format of exchange files (IFF), established by Electronic Arts in 1985 for use in electronic games. The Apple version, known as Audio Interchange Format (AIFF) files, was released in 1988 for Macintosh computers. Due to the common roots of these different sound formats, howeverCountler, IBM or Apple.

The WAV file had two very big things GPři performance. At first, this could digitize the sounds of 100% faithful to the original source, as it is a format . "Less of Lesson" means that the file format does not endanger the sound quality, even if it contains compressed data. Second, the format is very easy to modify and manipulate using software. Fortunately, for audiophiles, free sound editing software is available almost as long as WAV files themselves.

While this format was ideal for sound effects, it had a disadvantage in terms of music files. One four -minute song could easily consume more than 35 megabytes (MB) of space when it is stored as WAV. Although hard drive costs have dropped over the years, the format was still too large for portable players with limited flash memory, which would become ubiquitous new millennia. These filesIn addition, they were not the most practical format for online transmission, especially over the connection with low dialing.

Instead, the compressed MP3 format took the sound phase, because the songs stored in this format are much smaller. MP3 format is a loss format , which means that the smaller file size has a certain loss of sound quality. While the MP3 format is suitable for portable players, many people continue to store their main digital libraries as WAV files. In this way, the file can be used as a master to create other types of audio files (including MP3), while maintained for direct listening or burning on a compact disk (CD).

Today, the WAV file format is still used to archive music files in a lossless format, where space is not a problem. Some CDs and DVD players can also read these files when they are stored directly to the disk. The software that burns the CD files is more often converted into a compact disk sound format (.CDA), which makes the sound CD Compatible with all players.