Some containers only accept certain codecs, such as AIFF, which only accepts only uncompressed linear PCM, while others accept a variety of codecs. A container, such as WAVE, mp3, or FLAC will not only contain the encoded audio data, but also metadata that specifies everything from the type of audio encoding that follows, to file length, sample or bit rate, endianess, compression scheme and depth, etc. Whether it is plastic wrap, or a Ziploc bag, it still contains your ham sandwich. The second designation for a file is its container format, sort of like the wrapper you put your ham sandwich in. For example, we mentioned linear PCM encoding earlier on in the quantization section. The first is the codec or how the actual audio has been encoded and needs to be decoded. Most high-resolution file formats are now bi-endian, which is great, because it gets really confusing to keep track of as formats change and evolve and it allows the file formats to be as cross-platform as possible.Īudio files have two main nomenclatures relating to their function.

Microsoft WAV or WAVE format was designed for the Intel 80x86 processors, in which the LSB comes first (big-endian). For example, the AIFF format was designed for the Motorola 680x0-based Apple Macintosh, which used big-endian byte order), but later substituted AIFC with the advent of Intel chips, which were little-endian byte order for the encoded audio, but not for the other file information. Many of the file formats were originally designed to work with a specific processor chip.

Soundhack fix header