Digital sound is nothing more than numbers. What separates one container from another is how those numbers are packed, how much data (if any) is thrown away, and which devices understand the result.

Remember when Windows Media Player ruled the earth? Before the world was inundated with versatile playback tools like VLC and countless other platforms, most users flocked to the built-in OS media ...

Audio files come in a number of different formats. Some are lossy, such as AAC and MP3; they save space compared to the original files, but some of the original data is lost during compression. Some ...

Scenario: You’ve obtained an audio or video file that’s either in a format unsupported by the device you intend to play it on—an iOS device, traditional iPod, or your Mac, for example—or in a form ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. A file’s format—the way that it’s saved and encoded ...

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where there’s only one file format for every byte of audio-video content? Crashing back to reality though, we’re stuck with numerous codecs, and one of these ...