Audio file

Music files can be found on almost any computer. Sometimes these are just a few of your favorite songs, and sometimes the music collection contains tens of thousands of files of various audio formats. In order for the music on your computer to sound perfect, and the files in the library to be organized as you wish, you should know some basic information about them.
Best audio format
Highest quality audio format
MP3 tags
How to edit mp3 tags
Copy audio CD

Best audio format

“Best” is a relative concept. In determining which music format is the best, one should proceed from many factors, including the quality of the equipment on which the audio files will be listened to. In general, all audio formats are divided into three groups:

  • uncompressed audio formats;
  • lossy compression formats;
  • lossless compression formats.

The highest quality types of audio formats listed above are uncompressed formats. They are used to record music. At the same time, the sound quality is not lost. An example of such a format is the WAV format. The size of such files is very large, so it is practically not used for listening to music. It can be converted to any other music format.

An example of an audio format that uses lossy compression is the well-known mp3 format. For several decades, this format has been a leader in the popularity ratings of music formats. This category also includes WMA, OGG, AAC music. Of course, when compressing audio files, there is a loss of sound quality, but for the average user’s ear, this loss is insignificant. The main advantage of such files is their small size.

Formats of music with lossless compression (lossless) are used for listening on very high-quality expensive equipment. The most common of these formats is the FLAC format, which uses a compression rate of up to 60% of the original file, which significantly reduces its size. Almost all audio players support this format. Best audio format
It should be noted that when listening to high-end music equipment in MP3 format and FLAC format, the difference will be significant. While on ordinary household sound-reproducing apparatus, it may not be noticed.

Highest quality audio format

Relatively recently, the term Hi-Res Audio (High-resolution audio) appeared for high-quality sound files. These are high-resolution digital music files that reproduce lossless sound and reflect the full gamut of a musical recording. The main advantage of Hi-Res Audio is its high sound quality compared to compressed audio formats. The disadvantage of such files is a relatively large size. There are several major Hi-Res Audio file formats.

  • FLAC. This format is the most common among high quality formats. It is played by most audio players. The FLAC format is free and is most often used to create Hi-Res music albums.
  • WAV. This is an uncompressed audio file format. Music in this format has the highest sound quality, but WAV files are very large and have poor metadata support. Often, CDs are recorded in this format.
  • ALAC. This is the lossless compression format used for Apple devices. Files of this format support metadata and are half the size of WAV.
  • AIFF. This is also a format developed by Apple, without loss and compression. It is similar to the WAV format and has a large size.
  • MQA. This is a fairly new format, mainly used for streaming audio. To play files of this format, it is necessary to use compatible equipment.

Hi-Res Audio
For an ordinary user who listens to music through ordinary headphones of an audio player, an mp3 format or the like is quite enough for him. Regular audio equipment will not be able to reproduce all the richness of Hi-Res Audio. And only music lovers with high-quality equipment are able to fully enjoy the sound of Hi-Res Audio files.

MP3 tags

The composition of music files most often includes not only the file name, the extension and its actual contents, but also the so-called metadata. This data contains additional information about the contents of the file, such as album name, artist, and so on. The mp3 format just contains such metadata, called mp3 tags.
Initially, mp3 files did not contain metadata, which caused problems in identifying and sorting music. A few years later, an improvement was made to the mp3 format. At the end of the file, a small block of data was attached, which allowed us to save information for each music file with a length of 128 characters. This data is called ID3 tags. The following fields were part of this metadata.

  • Title – 30 characters.
  • Artist – 30 characters.
  • Album – 30 characters.
  • Year – 4 characters.
  • Comment – 30 characters.
  • Genre – 1 character.

The length of the fields was strictly unchanged.
In the future, the system of mp3-tags more than once plunged improvements. In recent versions, it has become possible to change the length of the metadata fields. id3 tag New fields have also been added. For example, it became possible to add an album cover, lyrics, a composer, copyrights, and more.
When playing music, music players read information about the file being played precisely from the metadata. In addition, the use of mp3 tags has greatly facilitated the automatic search for the right musical compositions.

How to edit mp3 tags

As you know, mp3 tags are created for easy sorting and identification of music files. If desired, this data can be changed. There are many programs that allow you to edit mp3 tags. Some audio players, for example, Windows Media Player also allow you to do this.

So, most of the mp3 tags can be changed without using third-party programs to edit them, but only using the means of Windows. To do this, open the Explorer music folder and click on the desired file. Tag editor
The file information will appear at the bottom of the window. Click on the field you want to edit, write your information there and click the “Save” button. Music tag editor
Not all mp3 tags are visible at the bottom of the “Explorer” window. In order to see the others, right-click on the file name and select the “Properties” item in the menu that appears. mp3 id tag
In the window that opens, go to the “Details” tab, where you can view all mp3 tags of the file. Most of them can be changed or add your own metadata values where there are none. Audio tag editor
Thus, even if there are no metadata programs on the computer, you can easily do with the built-in Windows tools.

Copy audio CD

How to copy your favorite music disc to your computer? If the music on the disc is recorded in mp3 format, everything is done very simply. To do this, simply open the contents of the disk using the “Explorer” or any other file manager, select all the files on the disk and copy them to one of the folders on the computer.
In case you need to copy music from an audio CD, the copying process will be a little more difficult. In order to transfer music from such discs to a computer, you can use standard Windows Media Player along with special programs.

  1. Insert the disc with music into the drive of the computer. Open Windows Media Player, in the top menu click on the “Organize” button and select the “Options” item in the menu that appears. Copy audio CD
  2. Click the “Rip Music” tab. On this tab, select the folder where the music will be copied, select the format and sound quality. Click “OK”. Audio rip
  3. Open the contents of the disc in Windows Media Player and check the songs you want to copy. Audio cd to mp3
  4. In the navigation pane, right-click on the disk name and in the appeared menu select the item “Rip CD to library”. Rip audio cd After that, the process of copying the marked files to the specified folder on the computer will start.
  5. Wait until all files are copied and open them in the specified folder of the computer.

And finally, advice for music lovers. Clean up your music library regularly. Get rid of unnecessary tracks and the same songs that are scattered in different folders in time. You don’t have to do it manually. You can remove duplicate music using a special duplicate mp3 remover.