AUDIO INFORMATION AND MEDIA

• Types of Audio Files:

  • Radio Broadcast (live or recorded audio with radio waves to reach wide audience)
  • Music (vocal/instrumental, it serves many purposes including religious, ceremonial, etc.)
  • Sound Recording (tape of interview, meeting, or environment)
  • Sound Clips/Effects (artificially reproduced for dramatic presentation)
  • Audio Podcast (part of themes series, can be downloaded from web or computer.)
• Ways of Storing Audio

  • Tape (magnetic material)
  • CD (plastic-fabricated, circular)
  • USB Drive (external flash-drive)
  • Memory Card (storage card, medium to store data for computing devices)
  • Computer Hard Drive (secondary storage device)
  • Internet/Cloud (web and servers)
• MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) - a common format for consumer audio, as well as a standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on most digital audio players
• M4A/AAC (MPEG-4 Audio/Advanced Audio Coding) - an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.
• WAV - is a Microsoft audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It has become a standard file format for game sounds, among others.
• WMA (Windows Media Audio) - is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft and used with Windows Media Player.