Weekly Computer Tip - MAKE SENSE OF MUSIC FORMATS

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>> Make sense of music formats :

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Have you heard music recordings referred to as MP3s? Did you think, "What could that possibly mean? I'll never understand that!"

The letters and numbers attached to music can be intimidating. But they're not too bad when you break them down. So, let's do that.

Things like MP3, WMA and AAC are file extensions. They tell Windows which program to use to play the file. All files have extensions. Probably the most common is DOC, which is used by Microsoft Word.

So, you'll see something like Filename.MP3. That tells Windows that the program associated with MP3 should be activated. That program could be Windows Media Player, the RealPlayer, MusicMatch, or any of a number of others. When you double-click Filename.MP3, the associated program will open and play it.

All of the music formats I have mentioned are compressed. MP3, for instance, is about 10 percent as big as an uncompressed file. MP3s revolutionized music, because they made it possible to put music libraries on computers. Uncompressed music files are huge, and can overwhelm even monster hard drives.

So let's look at some music formats.

MP3--This is an old standard, but still very usable. Almost all music players can handle it. You won't go wrong with MP3.

WMA--This stands for Windows Media Audio. Its files are much smaller than MP3s, but they deliver comparable music quality. Because WMAs are smaller, you can get more of them on the player. Many MP3 music players can also handle WMAs.

AAC--This is Advanced Audio Coding. It is used to format the music sold by Apple and RealNetworks. It is difficult to convert to more open standards such as MP3. Therefore, it is generally restricted to just a few music players.

WAV--This is an uncompressed format. It is sometimes used on recordable CDs. But it is not suited for storage on a computer. It's just too big.

How do you convert WAV to MP3, or MP3 to WMA? There are a number of conversion programs. My favorite is dBpowerAMP. It's free at:http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

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