MP3 and WAV File Formats

WAV is a variant of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in “chunks”, and thus also close to the IFF and the AIFF format used on Amiga and Macintosh computers, respectively.Both WAVs and AIFFs are compatible with Windows and Macintosh operating systems. The format takes into account some differences of the Intel CPU such as little-endian byte order. The RIFF format acts as a “wrapper” for various audio compression codecs.

Though a WAV file can hold compressed audio, the most common WAV format contains uncompressed audio in the pulse-code modulation (PCM) format. PCM audio is the standard audio file format for CDs, containing two channels of 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample.

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard encoding for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players. MP3's use of a lossy compression algorithm is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio for most listeners, but is not considered high fidelity audio by most audiophiles.

Converting WAV to MP3 with NoteBurner Converter

NoteBurner WMA to MP3 Converter is a program that can be used to convert music files, MP3 downloads or even iTunes Music Store songs to other, more compatible formats. It operates a little differently than the other products we reviewed because it is a virtual CD burner. It must be used in conjunction with a media player that can burn CDs because it makes the media player “burn” the song as a file on the hard drive instead of onto a real CD.

NoteBurner Audio Converter is a versatile WAV to MP3 Converter. The WAV converter is compatible with iTunes, WMP 10, Real Player, Adobe Audition (Cool Edit) and many other audio players and audio editors.

NoteBurner Audio Converter applies virtual CD burning technology to simulate the burning and ripping process. By doing so it converts DRM protected audio files, such as m4p, m4a, m4b, wma and audio book, and unprotected audio, such as wma, mp3, wav, rax, mp4, ra, snd, aac, ogg, aa and aif, etc. to mp3, wav and wma.

In the field of digital audio and software, audio converter is also referred as a computer program that converts existing audio file from one digital format to another digital format.

Hardware audio converter encompasses computer sound cards, cellular phones, and portable recording devices. Once converted to digital format, digital audio signals and file formats can be processed by software —including converting to audio CD or Mp3 formats.