What is Compressed Audio?


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Tutorial Home >Music and Video >Digital Music >Audio Formats >Compressed Audio >What is Compressed Audio?
Tutorial Home >Music and Video >MP3s >Audio Formats >Compressed Audio >What is Compressed Audio?

  Step 1:  Define Compressed Audio

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Compressed audio is the process of taking a large wave or aiff file and reducing its file size for storage purposes.
  Step 2:  Why Compress It?

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You may want to compress your audio files to save space on your hard drive, or to download them to a portable unit that cannot hold such large files.
  Step 3:  Unimportant Bits

Deleting "unimportant" bits results in extremely high data compression.
  Step 4:  How This Is Accomplished

A mathematical equation or algorithm first determines which bits are important and which are not, then strips out the unimportant bits to alter the original data to a compressed form.
  Step 5:  Don't Over Compress

Too much compression can result in the severe loss of sound quality. Although this may be acceptable for speech related audio, it is usually unacceptable for music related audio. A loss of dynamic range in high compression will result from over compressing your files, and the sound would be unsatisfactory.