MP3 / WMA / AAC

MP3, is the most popular digital audio encoding format. Originally invented in 1991 by Engineers of the Fraunhofer Society in Germany. It was designed as a lossy format to greatly reduce the amount of data required and yet still sound like the original uncompressed audio. This is achieved to differing degrees using bit rate and by discarding sounds inaudible to most listeners.

WMA, is Microsoft's proprietary compressed Windows Media Audio file format. It was initially setup to better the MP3 format. However, now it is seen competing with AAC along the same lines as the original 'WinTel' vs. Apple Mac debate. Either way, it offers excellent audio quality and fairly universal playback, becoming the 2nd most preferred format.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), was popularized by Apple through its iPod and iTunes Music Store. AAC is promoted as the successor to MP3 with improved performance for audio coding at medium to high bit rates. The Codec quality is again excellent however playback is mostly limited to Apple hardware.

WMA / FLAC / WAV Lossless

WMA, is Microsoft's proprietary compressed Windows Media Audio file format, setup to better the MP3 format. WMA Lossless is the ultimate version of the codec compressing at a minimum rate of 470kbps up to a maximum 940kbps, producing an exact copy of the original. It offers CD quality playback combined with being the most efficient lossless format.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), is an open source lossless audio codec. Unlike lossy codecs such as MP3 and AAC, it does not remove any information from the audio stream and compresses the files only. It is well suited to both everyday playback and for archiving audio collections. The FLAC format is supported by many software audio and music server products.

WAV (WAVE form audio), is the original audio file format standard from Microsoft and IBM for storing audio on the IBM PC.  Audiophile ripping programs e.g. Exact Audio Copy (EAC) will rip to WAV first and then encode later. WAV can be played on any PC, is readily edited and hence used by many professional audio studios. However it has the largest files of all formats.