There are three different types of audio that anyone can use to help themselves when it comes to the standard of reaching audio through your devices. The three common types of audio are MP3, AAC and WAV. All three of these audios are effective, but knowing and recognizing when each one is used can be very tricky. I’m going to explain the different types of them and when you can expect to see when these different formats can take place.

The first type of audio that I already named was MP3. The information I learned about MP3 comes from the shutterstock.com article that was sent to me via my professor. MP3 is the most common audio you can find in todays world. MP3 became infamous during the heyday of Napster. MP3s can be created with a range of bitrates, but most are 128, 192, or 320kbps. Amazon and many other media stores still use MP3 as their standard format, and for the average music listener, the quality is more than good enough. MP3s back in the day were used on MP3 players for music before all of the technology we use today to listen to music. You can mainly use MP3s in today’s world to stream music on devices through download of the music or audio clip.

The second type of audio form I will talk about is AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), and it’s the primary format that they sell in the Music Store. Intended to be a better version of MP3, AAC is generally a higher quality format, with the usual bitrate around 256kbps. YouTube also uses AAC conversion for audio uploaded to their servers. Other places where you can find AAC in the real word include in a DVD audio format, streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal and etc. You can also find podcasts through Apple’s Podcast app.

The final audio type that I will talk about is WAV. I honestly didn’t know what this type of audio format was until we started talking about it just recently. Essentially WAV (Waveform Audio File Format) were developed by Microsoft and IBM. Many people had assumed that these files can be Uncompressed Audio Files but however these can also be compressed audio files. You usually don’t see a ton of compressed audio files coming from WAV audio but in some cases, you may see it. WAV audio, when uncompressed, are usually in PCM Format. Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals, and it is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications.