WAV - WaveForm Audio Format

This section provides basic information on WAV, WaveForm audio format.

What is WAV? WAV is a short name for WaveForm, which is audio file format developed by Microsoft and IBM.

A WAV file name has the file extension of .wav.

The original WAV file format contains uncompressed audio data using the same encoding method, PCM (Pulse-Code Modulation), as audio CDs. So uncompressed WAV file size matches audio track sizes on audio CDs.

WAV files may also be encoded with a variety of codecs (coder and decoder) to compress audio data. A WAV file encoded with the mp3 codec may reduce the audio data to the same level as a MP3 file.

Roughly, uncompressed WAV files takes about 10MB space per 1 minute of play time. Here is how to calculate space requirement based on PCM specifications:

16 bits per sample
44,100 samples per second
60 seconds per minute
2 channels for stereo sound
1 minute stereo sound requires:
2 * 60 * 44,100 * 16 bits
   = 2 * 60 * 44,100 * 2 bytes
   = 10,584,000 bytes = 10 MB

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD-DA) Format

 Audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD-DA) Players

 Audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD-DA) Rip Music

WAV Audio File Format

WAV - WaveForm Audio Format

 MP3, MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, Encoding Format

 Burning MP3 Music to Audio CD

 Windows Sound Recorder

 ISO 9660 Standard for Data CD

 Recording Data on CD

 VCD (Video CD) Standard

 DVD (Digital Video Disc) Standard Format

 TOC (Table Of Contents) on CDs

 IsoBuster - A Nice CD GUI Tool

 MPlayer - The Movie Player

 vStrip - Rip and Manipulate DVD VOB Files

 mpgtx - Manipulating MPEG Files

 CD/DVD - File Name Extension and Format Types

 References

 Full Version in PDF/ePUB