Downloading high-quality audio files from the internet can be a tedious task. Of course, you want music with high bitrate tags. You download a 320kbps file, start playing it and suddenly get extremely disappointed with the sound quality. The problem could be your faulty speakers, but maybe the real bitrate doesn’t correspond to the info on the website. The audio codec is one more factor that affects your music quality whether you listen through a speaker or headphones.
A codec is a program that compresses data for transmission and decompresses the received data. To cut a long story short, the purpose of using an audio codec is to effectively reduce the size of an audio file without affecting the quality of the sound. There are two main types of audio codecs: lossy and lossless. Music files with lossy codecs have high degrees of digital compression and thus a smaller size compared to lossless ones. Lossy compression affects the sound quality and is not recommended for professional usage (sound studios, movie production, etc.). Two most popular audio formats with lossy codec are MP3 and AAC.
The lossless codecs in their turn keep the original quality of the audio file. Songs compressed with the lossless technique are usually heavy in size but provide a full range of sound waves. Listening to such music on good speakers is a real pleasure. Lossless audio codecs include FLAC, ALAC and WMA Lossless.
There are also uncompressed audio formats like WAV, PCM, and AIFF. As it’s clear from the word “uncompressed,” these files don’t undergo any type of compression and provide the music files as they were initially recorded.
If you don’t have an idea what codec has your recently downloaded audio file, you can simply check the bitrate and the file format of the audio file on Windows. That’s how you can do it.
- Just click on the start icon, then locate the file by searching for it in the explorer window.
- Right-click the file then select “Properties.”
- Under the General Tab in the Properties window, the file format is shown as “Type of File.” You can also see the file’s size and creation date in this tab.
- To check the bitrate, length, click the “Details” Tab.
- Click OK to close the window.
There is one more way to discover the metadata of your audio track. You can view the metadata of an audio file on a Windows computer using the Windows Media player. Metadata provides essential information about audio files including the audio’s origin, genre, album, artist, date of creation and date modified. You can also transcribe an audio file to get the recognition metadata which is used to generate lyrics and subtitles for your songs and movies respectively. Here is how to check the metadata:
- Click the start icon and type “Media Player” in the search box to locate and launch the program.
- Click the “Tools” menu and then select “Options” from the drop-down menu.
- On the “Library” tab, check “Retrieve Additional Information From the Internet.” Select the radio button for “Only Add Missing Information” to prevent overwriting information that’s already available.
- Locate your audio file in the Windows Media Player library. Right-click the album title and then click on “Find Album Info.”
- You can view the metadata by looking under “Existing Information,” on the left side of the media player.
If necessary, edit the metadata manually by clicking the “Edit” button under the Existing Information section. Click “Done” to finish the process.
Now when you know the codec of your audio file, you can have an idea if it’s the exact one that you need.
Each codec has its unique upsides and downsides. It’s not possible to say which one you should choose since everything depends on your final scope. If you want to have a universal audio format supported by any device, go for MP3. In case, you are mad about quality; your choice is FLAC or WMA. Whatever your choice is, you might need a special tool to convert your music from one format into another. For example, you can install SoundConverter if you use Linux or a free audio converter for Windows developed by Freemake. It’s a free and easy-to-use program that will help you convert your audio files. Besides that, it can also show you the meta information of your audio file. Using Freemake Audio Converter, you can do this in a couple of steps:
- Launch Freemake Audio Converter on your PC.
- Click on “File” menu and then select “Add Audio” from the drop-down menu.
- Select your audio file from the file explorer window and click “Open.”
- The codec, name, length, sampling frequency, bitrate, sound system, and file size are displayed respectively.
That’s how you can learn and edit your audio file data. If this article helped you, don’t forget to share it with your friends.