There are many kinds of audio file formats. Let us discuss common Audio File Formats, They are as follows:
1. MIDI
2. WAVE
3. MP3
MIDI – Musical Instrument Digital Interface:
It is a communication channel developed in early 1980’s. It acts as an interface between the musical instruments and computer system. MIDI provides a protocol to allow music and sound from the musical instruments, along with cables to the computer. This type of data is not in digitized form but they are represented in numeric file. A MIDI file is a list of time stamped commands that are recordings of musical actions like pressing piano key. It is a device dependent and the sounds produced by MIDI music files depend on the particular MIDI device used for play back. MIDI can record more than 16 different notes from different types of instruments simultaneously. A synthesizer is very much necessary to translate information gathered by the MIDI device into sound which after translating becomes a melodious music.
WAVE:
The WAVE format was developed by International Business Machine and Microsoft. It is supported by all computers running Windows and by all the most popular Web Browsers except Google Chrome. WAVE Synthesis technology is mainly used by music composers. The WAVE synthesis cards are also special purpose audio cards which are used for creating professional music. The music is created by adding and deleting music notes. The file extension is .wav.
MP3- Media Players:
We can play audio songs with the help of media players. With media player, we can play video (or) animation files and can control settings for multimedia hardware devices. Media Player is provided in Windows Operating System. [Windows 3.1 or Windows 95]. The appropriate device drivers are to be installed in the multimedia computer system to play audio songs. Media Player allows the designer to use different items like File, Edit, Device, scale etc. The various button controls are play, pause, Move Back, Move Forward, Move to End, move forward (or) Backward Frame to Frame, Eject etc. MP3 files are actually the sound part of MPEG files. The MPEG format was originally developed for video by the Moving Picture Expert Group. The encoding system combines good compression with high quality. These files are very small in size and occupy very less memory space.