We have all saved music on our computer in the past whether it be from downloaded music to uploading old CD’s that we have bought in the past, however one question that always comes up, what’s the best file format to save music onto your computer? Remember transferring music from CD's to your computer hard-drive will always take away some of the music quality.
Of all the different file formats that are floating around on the internet, we can only recommend two types as they are both the best performing and most common. Yes there might be other file formats that give amazing sound, however they are very un-common meaning that only a few different music players will actually play this type of file which can very annoying, especially when you want to play music on different systems around your life.
.MP3
This is by far the most common form of Music files across the world with nearly 80% of all music being stored in this format. This means that your music is easily stored, but more importantly, easily transferred to other music players around your house or hard drives that can then be used to store or share music with your friends. Unlike .Wav files below, .MP3 Files are not stored in a bit-for-bit system, but rather stored using an computer generated algorithm to reduce the space on your hard-drive that it take to store your music meaning that a typically album can take as low as 400MB of space on your hard-drive. The downside is that unless your transfer music at at least 320KBS the audio quality can easily be reduced.
.Wav
This type of file is also common amongst music listeners, however rather than using an algorithm to save music, it saves music Bit-For-Bit save method which does mean that the quality is better, but it also means that it will take up much more room on your hard-drive.
.AIF
Apart from the two file formats above, the only other format we would recommend and this is only for dedicated MAC users as your very un-likey to be able to play this type file anywhere else, is .Aif which is an Apply only file format that saves data in a very similar way to a .Wav file. Again, you’re limited to using this type of file format only on a Mac and you’re going to need plenty of Hard-Drive space as it will take up a lot of space saving this type of music.
If you're wavering whether you want to download and compress your music then maybe you need to check this blog post where we look at whether you should compress your music in the first place.
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