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.

A good quality DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) is one of the crucial elements when it comes to deciding the kind of audio experience you can expect from a device. And at large, the same holds true ...

A process is used when music is compressed into MP3 to discard all the sounds a machine thinks the human ear can't audibly perceive, thus vastly reducing the amount of storage needed to hold entire ...

If you stream music (and who doesn't these days) you've obviously come across abbreviations at the end of the audio files. The acronyms reading WAV, FLAC, MP3 and so on, are called audio codecs. You ...

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 ...

There’s been a lot of talk lately about lossless audio, and that might have led you think that you need special equipment or an expensive streaming music service to get it. But that couldn’t be ...

I regularly get questions about lossless audio files, or files compressed in a lossless format, for my Ask the iTunes Guy column. These questions come from people who seek to listen to the best ...

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