Absolute Beginners Guide to Computer Basics (2nd Edition)

Anyone with a personal computerand the right softwarecan make digital copies of music from CDs, and then store these copies on their computer's hard disk. These digital audio files can also be traded with other users, over the Internet.

We'll learn more about playing digital music in Chapter 32, "Downloading and Playing Digital Music." But before we get into the mechanics of creating your own digital music library, you need to understand the various audio file formats available for your use.

You see, there are many different ways to make a digital recording. Each format has its plusses and minuses, as described in Table 31.1.

Here's the lowdown. The AIFF and WAV formats are used to create commercial CDs, and therefore have the best sound quality. These formats result in extremely large files, however, which makes them inappropriate for downloading and use with portable music players.

The other three formats create much smaller files, at the expense of sound quality. These formats compress the sound to some degree, which is noticeable to some audiophilesalthough you probably can't tell when listening via headphones or PC speakers.

Of these three formats, the MP3 format is the oldest and most universal; almost every music player program and portable music player is MP3-compatible. The WMA format was developed by Microsoft, and is used by most commercial online music stores; it's compatible with all music player programs except Apple's iTunes, and with all portable music players except Apple's iPod. The AAC format is Apple's proprietary format, and is used by both iTunes and iPod; it's not compatible with many other music player programs and portable music players.

If you're downloading music, you probably don't have a choice of formats; you have to take the music in the format that it's in. When you're copying files from your CD to your PC, however, you have your choice of format.