• What is uncompressed digital audio?

The original CDs that you purchase are uncompressed. Most commercially produced CDs use the Red Book Audio standard—a standard that specifies the PCM file format. PCM format stores raw data with no compression and no loss of information. AIFF and WAV files commonly use the PCM format. Uncompressed files take up a lot of space.

• What is encoding?

Encoding is the process of converting uncompressed digital audio to a compressed format.

There are two basic types of compression:

1. lossless compression stores digital audio with absolutely no loss of information.

        It reduces file size by assigning frequently appearing patterns a code.

        File size is approximately half the size of the original PCM file.

        This format is a good choice for archival purposes.

        Examples:  FLAC, MLP, LPAC, APE

2. lossy compression  discards unnecessary and redundant information and then applies
    lossless compression techniques to further reduce file size.

        File size is approximately 1/10 the size of the original PCM file, and approximately 1/4 the size

        of a lossless file.

        Examples: MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, ATRAC, WMA, Dolby Digital, QuickTime, RealAudio

• What is bit-rate?

Bit-rate refers to the number of bits (0s and 1s) that are used to represent the audio signal each second. Bit-rate indicates the quality of the sampling. The higher the bit rate, the higher sound quality, and the larger the file size. Bit-rates are expressed in thousands of bits per second (kbps).

• How do I choose the bit-rate?

The bit-rate you choose will depend on how you intend to use the music, and how much storage space you have.

Use the following guidelines to help you decide which MP3 bit-rate is best for you:

     Bit-rate         Quality                   Reasons to choose this bit-rate:

     128                Good                      Have limited storage capacity; Using MP3 players to play music
     192                Near CD quality   Best choice when taking into account quality and space
     256                CD quality             Using a high quality home stereo and speakers to play music
     320                Best quality           Want optimal performance on high quality systems and have
                                                            lots of storage space

• What audio formats do you offer?

We convert to the following formats:

MP3   A high quality, universally supported format that can be played on all PC players and
           nearly all digital playing devices (including Apple’s iPod). MP3 format is by far the most
           popular audio file type.

FLAC  Royalty-free, well-supported lossless format. It is a good choice for archiving musical files
            that may need to be edited or re-encoded at some point in the future.
            FLAC files take up Approximately 4x the space as an MP3 file at 128 kbps.
            FLAC files cannot be played on the iPod or other portable MP3 players.