There are many different types of audio files which you can encode your music and sounds into. But which one is right for each job from a musicians perspective. This guide lists the most popular audio file types in use today and when you as a musician should use them and when you shouldn’t.

Waveform Audio (.wav)
A very common and one of the oldest formats of digital sound storage created by Microsoft and IBM and also one the most simplest to use. Most Wav files are uncompressed which means that they are Large in storage size (aprox. 10Mb for 1 minute of audio) so tend to be used only when space or data transfer speeds aren’t an issue and keep all the original sound data intact just the way it was recorded. The most popular Wav encoding format is called pulse-code modulation (PCM) format which is used (only varying very slightly in non-audio data) as the standard for CD. CDs are two channels (Stereo) of 44,100 samples per second with each sample point using 16 bits of data. I use this format for my samples as all music software will support it and I know no audio data is lost.

When should you use Wav files - Use it for your samples your going to use in your music. Also use it when you don’t want to lose audio quality such as passing recordings to other musicians to work on. It’s also good for your main audio backup of you music should you ever have to encode into another format or write a CD.

When shouldn’t you use Wav files - When transferring files over the internet they are far too big or any situation where file size is an issue.

FLAC (.flac)
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec and as the name suggests compresses your sounds without losing any of the sound quality. Files can be reduced by around half the data size whilst still keeping all of the audio that a WAV file would keep. Because FLAC is free it means that makers of hardware software can incorporate the encoder/decoder without paying a license fee.

When should you use FLAC files - When you want to store files and save some space but don’t want to lose any of the quality. Today many musicians find they can work with other musicians around the world via the internet quickly by sending files back and forth and sending your files in FLAC can save time uploading and downloading as slow connection speed without losing the audio quality.

When shouldn’t you use FLAC files - When you want people to download your music as fast as possible as file sizes are still big compared to other lossy compression formats.

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (.mp3)
Unless you have been living on the moon these last 10 years you will have definitely heard of this format. It changed the music industry forever when it became popular file format with internet users and making headlines in the media. It was created by Philips, Fraunhofer Society, CCETT, and IRT as a format which was small in data storage space (approx. Only a tenth of the size of a Wav file depending on encoding bit rate). It does this by removing the data which human hearing cannot hear and it does this with varying degress of success depending on the bit rate chosen and the encoder used. Mp3s encoded in bit rates of 128kbit/s sound worse but take up a tiny amount of space where as mp3s recorded at say 320kbit/s sound better (Not as good a Wav or Flac) but take up more space and the person encoding can choose whether they are going for better sound or better compression.

Windows Media Audio (.wma)
Created by Microsoft as a format to compete with Mp3. There are different codecs for doing different types of compression one for voice, music, a high resolution and a lossless compression format. Microsoft claims that WMA sounds better than Mp3 even at lower bit rates although this is debatable. Personally I would stick with Mp3 over this format as other people are more used to seeing Mp3 and some older Mp3 players may not support WMA.

Ogg Vorbis (.ogg, .oga)
Ogg Vorbis is yet another lossy compression format and this one is my personal favourite, why? because it is FREE and I believe it is the best sounding especially at lower bitrates. Produced by Xiph.org Foundation when licensing fees for encoders and decoders of mp3 files was introduced. I think that you will see this file format more and more as many hardware and software media players, computer games, music composition software have added the codec due to the ability to add it for free. This cuts down on software production costs especially for computer games where no other codecs for sound will be needed. Another reason why this is my favourite lossy codec is because I really believe that music sounds better in this format at the same bit rate when encoding from a lossless source, try it yourself and see.

When should you use Mp3, WMA and Ogg Vorbis files - Use them when you want to distribute your music via the internet, people will be able to download the files fast and also listen to them. You’ve just got to make a choice between them. Mp3 files are supported by many players and are seen as the industry standard for lossy audio compared to the other two and more people know them. WMA is also good but you may find people without the codec such as Linux Users and some Mp3 Players. Where as Ogg Vorbis is in the public domain, free (and so should be supported by us musicians more) but hasn’t got the support of some hardware manufacturers.

When shouldn’t you use Mp3, WMA and Ogg Vorbis files - Don’t use these if sound quality is important to you such as your recordings, your sample collection or for backups of music you created.

RealAudio (.ra, .ram)
RealAudio is another compression format and works very well for streaming data and is used by many on-line radio stations. A lot of complaints about RealAudio is that the codecs used for playing don’t come with operating systems such a Windows and Linux and they have to download RealPlayer. (There is an alternative to called Real Alternative which you can find on the internet which just installs the codec but not many people know this). To be honest with this file format unless you are streaming data I wouldn’t use it as a way to distribute your music unless your offering an alternative as the person listening may just not even bother with your tracks.

When should you use RealAudio files - When you want to stream music such as on-line radio or even small tester clips before visitors download in a bigger sized format. Offer another format too such as WMA or Mp3 because of people not having the codec.

When shouldn’t you use RealAudio files - When you want to have enjoyable sound quality.

Musical Instrument Digital Interface (.midi, .mid)
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and contains no audio sound at all (A mistake that’s more common than some people think). Instead they contain note data which tells your sound card or other MIDI device which notes to play on which instrument from a bank of usually 128 sound stored inside your MIDI device. It also contains lots of MIDI information about each note such a volume, length.

When should you use MIDI files - When you want to store or send data relating to the notes played on a device or piece of software that supports MIDI information.

When shouldn’t you use MIDI files - When you want to distribute actual audio that has been recorded.

Others Worth A Mention
Sun Audio (.au) - developed by Sun Microsystems for use on UNIX (a operating system)
Audio Interchange File (.aif, .aifc or .aiff.) - Basically this file type is WAV files for the Mac

Conclusion
Choosing a suitable file type can be tricky for people who aren’t accustomed to them and so hopefully this short guide will help someone get the most from them. One thing to mention is that there is no point in going from one lossy audio file type to another, such as Mp3 to Ogg Vorbis as once you have lost the audio data you can’t get it back and the file quality will actually be worse due to the differing techniques in removing data. When encoding to a lossy format always encode from a lossless format such as Wav, FLAC, CD or straight out of you music software/hardware. And if you want to keep the best audio quality possible use lossless.

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.

There are many sample CDs available today full of samples and while a lot of them contain some excellent sounds and loops, I believe that you should stay clear of them as much as possible when selecting samples for your music. This article explains why I think that way.

Sample CDs can cost a lot of money, mainly because what you are buying is a license to use the sounds in your productions legally and not just to listen to like a standard CD. I don’t want to make out all Sample CDs to be evil because some of them are great and can come in very handy when looking for that certain orchestral instrument sound for example which you can’t get hold of yourself. But there are many Sample CDs out there containing nothing but sounds and loops which I believe can slow down creativity, the learning process (especially for beginners) as well as making musicians lazy.

They slow down creativity because they stop people from creating and developing their own sounds and if everyone sticks to the same old sample CDs (especially genre based ones) then they aren’t going to be creating their own unique sound or take on a certain genre.

They can also slow down a musicians learning process because many of the sounds have had effects and processing galore put on them to make you go WOW! While this sounds amazing for the individual sounds, when all these sounds get put together into a track they end up sounding mushy, all fighting for the same space in the mix. Beginners to music creation then learn from tutorials and books that they then need to add more effects and mix down their tracks only to find they can’t get the sound they want as they have nothing to work with. This stops and hinders them from learning about sound creation, how to add effects and mix sounds together properly. This then leads to “why doesn’t my track sound as good as the ones in the shops” questions you see a lot on message boards.

The truth is that you can easily find alternatives which are a lot of the time a better choice. I would advise anyone before buying a sample CD to ask themselves can I record these sounds myself with a microphone myself or can I use a synthesizer to create those sounds myself. Can I recreate that drum loop using my own samples, can I then mix it up, change it and make it sound better. Can I be limited only by my own creative abilities and not what some some sound engineer decides is a good collection of sounds.

I also know that as a musician using your own sound creations you will start to look upon your own music with a lot more pride. You may even find yourself creating a new unique and personal sound in your music and surely that can only be a good thing.

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation

One thing that every electronic musician should have is a big collection of samples in which they can come to when composing and quickly select one needed or to experiment with, these are my tips on sound sample collecting which can help you expand your collection, keep organized and create some interesting results.

1. With samples one of the most important things to do is to stay legal and organized. A simple way to do this is to sort your samples into different folders on your hard drive by license type (for example folders called Royalty Free, Free To Use Non Commercially and Creative Commons Samples). Then within those folders put the samples into more folders entitled by the source you found them (for example a folder called The Freesound Project). Using this method you can easily see the license and source of sample when choosing.
2. Some days when you aren’t feeling musically creative it is much better to have a day of creating samples instead. I’ve had many a day when I’ve either sat in front of a synth experimenting making patches or in front of a microphone recording sounds. Splitting the making samples process from the writing music process can really benefit both areas
3. Experiment as much as possible with different sounds in front of a microphone. You can get some great sounds from simple household objects. One of my favourites is pots and pans (Now everyone thinks I’ve gone mad!) but I’ve ended up layering these sounds together with other drum sounds to create whole new sounds. Try reversing them too and you get these metallic sounding whooshes from pots and pans (I hear them in films all the time). Sounds like you banging on cardboard boxes or slamming doors layered with kick drums can create whole new sounding kicks. Go round your house finding different things to hit with different things. The list is endless, family will think you’ve gone mad but the results can be amazing, interesting and really add something different to your music. That band called Stomp with the metal bins comes to mind.

4. Lots of sounds can be made with the mouth too, check out HumanBeatbox.com. Now you might be thinking but I can’t beatbox like that Gavin TyTe (The guy in the vids). No maybe not, but on that site there are some excellent tutorials on how to replicate kicks, snares and hats with your mouth which can on their own be done quite easily and quickly (the hard part is putting it all together). Then create your own personal HumanBeatBox drum kit in your favourite drum machine software or in Propellerheads Reason or Fruity Loops. The results can be very good especially with some reverb, delay and chorus effects on.
5. Keep a look out on eBay and in your charity shops, I’ve managed to buy some shakers, tambourines for next to nothing. Sampled them as much as I could and then got rid by reselling on eBay or donating back to the charity shop.
6. Make shakers out of containers and those dried peas and rice you can get from the supermarket. Sometimes they might not sound like the real thing but with a little bit of reverb on they can sound pretty good. Plastic drinks bottles or those plastic yoghurt drink bottles work really well for this. Small gravel from the garden is good too.
7. If you have friends who are musicians and create their own samples then maybe you can swap ones you’ve made with ones they’ve made, this can increase your collection and theirs very quickly.
8. Borrow instruments off of friends or relatives, sample them and then give them back. Ask to go round and sample their piano, guitar or violin. Maybe you have a wannabe singer in the family, ask them to do some simple vocal singing phrases.
9. There are some music making magazines which regularly have CDs full of samples on (make sure you check the licensing though and put them in your appropriate folder (see tip #1). I regularly visit my market where there is a magazine stall which sells magazines that are a couple of months old and I pick up these for £1 each. Libraries may also have them if they stock the magazines.
10. Subscribe to our RSS feed or bookmark this site in your favourites as we are going to release lots of sample packs over the coming months which are free to use as well as links to other sites with free samples.

Hopefully from this list of tips and ideas for samples you can go away and maybe introduce something new into your music or create some personalised sound samples. I shall release a few of my own samples which use some of the ideas in this article over the next couple of months so look out for them.

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation

I know some of you might be saying “but I learnt this in school”, but here at Rhythm Creation we are trying to cover all aspects of music and sound for all ages. Sound science is good to know about when recording, mixing and composing using editing software, samplers and synthesizers and today we are going back to basics to learn what sound really is.

Every sound has a source and at the source you will find that to of created that sound something must have vibrated back and forth. This vibration at the sound source may not even be visible. As our source vibrates it passes this vibration onto the air around it (or whatever other matter is around it for example water).

• As our sound source vibrates forward it bumps into air molecules and pushes them closer to other air molecules, we end up getting a section of air molecules crowded closer together. This is called compression and if we were to see this on a waveform editor it is when the wave goes above the centre line (a peak)
• As our sound source vibrates backwards it pull the air molecules apart and increases the distance between our air molecules so they are less crowded. These are called rarefactions and these are when the waveform goes below the centre line in an editor (a trough)

These compressions and rarefactions make up the sound wave. The best way to visualize these compressions and rarefaction is to get a slinky (Yes one of those things that “walks” down the stairs) and two people hold it at each end and spread apart. One person then compresses the end by pushing it towards the other person and you will see that sections will compress and decompress and the “message” will get transferred from one end to the other.

Sound travels in all directions from our sound source, just like when you drop a stone in water and the ripple effect goes out in all directions. Eventually it will then come to our ears. Our outer section of our ear (the bit you can see pull) collects the sound up and helps to direct it down the ear canal. Sound travels down the ear canal and hits the ear drum (the tympanic membrane).

Just like our sound source passes on the vibration to air, air passes it’s vibration onto our ear drum as our ear drum copies the compressions and rarefactions. Our ear drums then pass this vibration message on through some tiny bones, the cochlea, hairs and some nerves to our brains, where we process the signal.

A good understanding of sound science can really help Music Creation and here at Rhythm Creation we will be bringing more articles about sound science such as what is frequency and reverberation amongst other things. We just wanted to start with a simple sound wave today.

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.

As we saw in part 1, sound is made up of waves of compressions and rarefactions in the air molecules around us. In part 2 we are going to talk about frequency and wavelength and how they relate to these compressions and rarefactions and how they relate to each other. I think it is important to understand these when creating music with a computer. Understanding frequencies can really help with your mixdowns and EQing.

Wavelength
In a sound we get compressions and rarefactions in the air molecules, when we look at these in a waveform editor we see a wave. In the picture below we can see a waveform of a sine wave. Wavelength is very easy to understand as it is the distance between any two points at the exact same point in the cycle of the wave. The arrows in the image below show the wavelength and points in which you can measure it.


These points in effect relate to the the distance (the wavelength) between these compressions and rarefactions in the air molecules of the sound wave travelling through the air.

Relating Wavelength to Frequency
Human ears can hear a range of different frequencies, frequencies are measured in Hertz (Hz) and a human can hear from around 20 Hz to around 20,000 Hz (or 20kHz). Though this would be someone with very good hearing and these values vary from person to person and they also vary with age. But what does this really mean.

If a sound has a frequency of 1 Hertz it means that there was one cycle (wavelength) in one second. We can hear sounds which are 20 wavelengths per second to 20,000 wavelengths per second. We perceive these wavelengths as frequencies. if we hear a sound at say 60Hz we will hear this as a very low sound, where as if we hear a sound which is say at 10kHz we will hear this as a high sound. Our ears though are not sensitive to all those frequencies by the same amount though. We are less senstive to the sounds at the extremes of our hearing. We are much more sensitive to the sound from a range of approximately 100Hz to 3000Hz. This range is funnily enough where the main frequencies of the normal human voice are.

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation