Audio File format for referencing?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Marc2109
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Marc2109

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I have been reading that its a good idea to take some good professional recordings to use as a reference to get to know what your monitors actually sound like. I probably don't want to import mp3 files because of all the compression. what would be the best audio format to keep as close to the CD quality as possilbe? Are there files already out there somewhere that can be downloaded?


Thanks
 
WAV files would be the usual, but any uncompressed or lossless file will do. AIFF files are uncompressed, and FLAC files are compressed but lossless.

If you've got the track on CD then just rip it to WAV. Download file quality has gotten better as bandwidth has increased so you should be able to find high quality files online.
 
When people want the highest audio quality, the most common file types used are FLAC and WAV. FLAC is compressed, but it's pretty much indistinguishable from CD quality. WAV is an uncompressed format, but generally the same level of quality as FLAC.

Of course, you have to know the source of the audio files to know if they're actually high-quality. If someone rips a CD in MP3 and then transcodes it to FLAC, you'll just have a huge file with MP3 quality.

There's software that can rip CDs to FLAC (A popular one is EAC, google it for more info), but you can also find FLAC or WAV files on the internet - usually illegally though, most legitimate digital retailers sell in MP3.
 
Sax2 said:
but you can also find FLAC or WAV files on the internet - usually illegally though, most legitimate digital retailers sell in MP3.
Click to expand...

This is changing. More material is being made legitimately available in high quality formats. On Bandcamp you can download in FLAC, ALAC, Ogg Vorbis, 320k MP3 and AAC. The default is VBR MP3. Some formats even support 24 bit and high sample rate audio.
 
> If you've got the track on CD then just rip it to WAV.

This is what I would suggest. Or - perhaps better, in terms of convenience - have a CD player at hand that you can play over your monitors.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
This is changing. More material is being made legitimately available in high quality formats. On Bandcamp you can download in FLAC, ALAC, Ogg Vorbis, 320k MP3 and AAC. The default is VBR MP3. Some formats even support 24 bit and high sample rate audio.
Click to expand...

Yep, but Bandcamp is miles ahead of most retailers. :p
 
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