It's an understatement to say that the Internet has changed pretty much everything in our daily lives. Digital audio was one of the first forms of media that really took off on the Internet. Today, we buy our music online, listen to radio and download podcasts, which was all impossible just a few short years ago. As digital video overtakes audio as the popular Internet media, there are still many things a video producer can do with digital audio online. There are a handful of digital audio formats floating around on the Internet and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Let's take a look.

WAV Files

The uncompressed WAV file - and its Mac cousin, the AIFF file - are reference standards when it comes to digital audio. As uncompressed formats, they are perfect digital copies of the source and have no peer when discussing quality. Unfortunately, they're also huge; a CD-quality stereo WAV file is roughly 11MB per minute. With today's broadband connections, that's not as big a barrier as it once was, but that's still a lot of bandwidth to move a single file. Regardless, WAV files are still found on the Internet. You'll see them on sound effects sites, product demos and, occasionally, as a music download when quality is more important than file size. If you need to send a WAV file, don't plan on emailing it. Even with the generous 20MB attachment limit of many email services, it's hard to squeeze an uncompressed file into the average inbox. Instead, post it for downloading on a hidden page of your website or use one of the large-attachment services like DropSend.com or YouSendIt.com. If sound quality is important, the WAV file is the only way to go.

MP3 Format

MP3 is the granddaddy of compressed Internet audio and has become the de-facto standard for online audio distribution. MP3s are often 1/10th the size of their uncompressed counterparts which makes them perfect for passing around on the Internet. A typical song compressed with MP3 encoding might be only three or four megabytes in size. Of course, the decrease in file size comes with a price. MP3 stands for MPEG1, Layer 3 Audio and is a part of the MPEG1 compression standard. It relies on perceptual coding to reduce the amount of data required to play music. The encoding algorithms scan the original source and decide what parts of the program are important and what parts aren't and then squeezes the audio hard to achieve its small file size. MP3 bitrates are adjustable so, when you encode audio, you decide the quality level by the bitrate you allow. For instance, the iTunes MP3 encoder works at a default value of 160kbs which makes a pretty nice sounding file. The massive popularity of MP3 indicates most people can't hear the difference (or don't care) but MP3 is only one of many compressed sound formats. Regardless, it's all over the Internet. Your editing software likely supports it, both for input and output and it's not going away anytime soon.

Ogg Vorbis

If you're not familiar with Ogg Vorbis, that's OK. It's not exactly mainstream yet, but it has some benefits over MP3 and many of the other encoding formats. Ogg is actually an open-source media container that houses audio and video. Vorbis is the audio portion and is also open-source, meaning that there are no license fees or royalties to pay for implementing this encoding technology. In blind listening tests, many people find that Vorbis-encoded audio sounds cleaner and more natural than other formats. For instance, a 96kbs or even 64kbs Vorbis file holds up nicely against a 128kbs file using another encoder. This means higher quality and smaller file size. While it's unlikely that Ogg Vorbis will dethrone MP3 or any of the other technologies, it is used by many recordists on the Freesound Project (www.freesound.org) - a free audio effects site. Ogg Vorbis is also popular with some independent music composers, those creating media on the Linux operating system and is built into many of the popular video games.