About Wav Files

Wav stands for Waveform Audio Format. As its name suggests, it is a type of file used to play uncompressed digital audio. It is most commonly found on PC computers, as Macs tend to use the similar AIFF format. While smaller audio files such as MP3 have made Wav somewhat obscure in consumer applications, it is still useful way of storing sound.

Features

Wav files are an application of the RIFF file format from Microsoft, which stores data in building blocks known as "chunks." In multimedia files such as Wav, these chunks are comprised of logical pieces of data, such as frames in a video or, in this case, samples of audio. To divide analog audio into chunks, the computer typically uses a sampling method called "Pulse Code Modulation," or PCM.

Geography

To understand how a Wav file works, consider first the nature of analog audio, such as the human voice. Sound is created from changes in pressure, and the frequency with which that pressure fluctuates creates sound waves. Pulse Code Modulation, as applied to audio, measures frequency at regular intervals, so instead of being a smooth sound wave, a Wav file consists of several points along the way. Audio is created again by connecting each point.

Size

The size of a Wav file is determined by several factors. The first is the sampling frequency of the Wav file, expressed in either Hertz or Kilohertz. The most common frequency for Wav files is 44.1 KHz. Another factor is bit rate, which basically determines how accurate each sample can be. Most Wav files are 16 bits. The higher both of these properties are, the larger the resulting Wav file will be. Finally, the size of a Wav file depends on whether it is stereo, meaning it uses two channels for left and right side playback, or mono, which uses one channel. Obviously, stereo takes up twice as much space as mono.

Benefits

Wav is an uncompressed audio format, meaning that the entire analog signal is preserved in the digital file. By comparison, popular compressed audio solutions such as MP3 and AAC use lossy compression, cutting out portions of the audio that are deemed undetectable by the human ear. For this reason, lossy audio formats are much smaller in size at the expense of quality. Ripping a Wav file from an audio CD and burning it back onto CD several times won't hurt the integrity of the sound. Ripping an MP3 from a CD, then burning to CD, then ripping again will cause noticeable drops in quality.

Function

Despite the advent of compressed audio, Wav still has many uses. Musicians and filmmakers still deal in Wav to avoid the loss in quality associated with compressed audio. For consumers, CD burning software may still require these files when creating audio CDs. Also, Wav files live on in the sound effects used by Windows, including startup and shutdown noises, and error messages.