Project Info

In this project we will explore and discuss how different audio formats and compression work, and different ways of implementing audio distribution over the internet.

File Formats

You can download in any of the following formats from bandcamp: MP3 V0, MP3 320, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, ALAC, WAV, AIFF

FLAC (Lossless)

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a lossless audio format and encoding that reduces file size without the cost of reduced audio quality. Previously, the only way to get lossless files was via uncompressed CD formats CDA or WAV. Audio files encoded to FLAC are typically 50-70% of their original size. Although FLAC files are up to six times larger than an MP3, they are typically 50-70% the size of a CD. Unlike other lossless formats such as WAV, FLAC can also retain “tag” data such as artist, album name, lyrics, and so on. FLAC is a cost-effective way to distribute CD-or-better-quality music, and it doesn’t have the loss in quality that MP3 has.

To encode to FLAC, a 16-bit or 24-bit resolution is required for streaming. FLAC offers compression levels varying from 0 (fastest) to 8 (slowest, but smallest file size). The compressed files are always lossless, but the compression level describes a tradeoff between speed and size.

Project Update

Changes to Project Scope

Based on initial feedback and internal discussion surrounding the course project, and its current depth with regards to our current scope, we have decided to expand this to allow for a more robust analysis of audio formats and delivery as a whole. This decision was made to introduce similar topics to introduce comparisons into the report and overall a better analysis. Originally, we wanted to just focus on Bandcamp and how they handle their distribution and file compression specifically, but it did not seem like it would provide sufficient content after follow-up analysis. Some content ideas that will be tentatively added will be assessing systems such as Spotify and how they are able to consistently provide high quality audio to a large number of people without excessive buffer times and bandwidth usage for user systems. Other potential systems are iTunes/Apple Music, and Beatport.

Changes to Project Proposal

Our new project proposal can be viewed here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15M6ucIBrshzaobjm_U-Hd_pZhIIS-niM/view?usp=sharing

We will also be changing our project name to Audio Formats and Distribution Research.

Project Progress

So far we have done 1.5 weeks of research into different audio formats, and have added some of our findings to the project website. The work that is remaining is another 1 week of research into audio formats, and 2.5 weeks of research into audio distribution. So far progress is good in regard to the schedule.

Final Report