Audio

Files that hold sound, or the instructions to make it: recordings, compressed music, MIDI and tracker modules, the project files of music software, instrument banks and playlists.

Groups

Uncompressed

Audio samples stored exactly as recorded.

2 formats

Lossless

Compressed audio that decodes back to the exact original samples.

1 format

Lossy

Compressed audio that drops detail the ear is unlikely to miss.

2 formats

MIDI & trackers

Notes and instructions for a synthesiser or a sample player, rather than recorded sound.

3 formats

Music projects

The saved work of music software: patterns, tracks, mixer settings and plugins.

2 formats

Instruments & samples

Banks of sampled instruments, with the rules for playing them.

1 format

Playlists

Lists of tracks to play, by file path or web address.

1 format

All audio formats

Format	Name	About
Uncompressed
`.AIFF`	Audio Interchange File Format	Apple’s uncompressed audio, big-endian samples in IFF chunks.
`.WAV`	Waveform Audio File Format	The Windows audio file: RIFF chunks holding the sample format and PCM samples.
Lossless
`.FLAC`	Free Lossless Audio Codec	Open lossless compression: metadata blocks, then frames of predicted samples.
Lossy
`.MP3`	MPEG-1 Audio Layer III	The classic compressed music format: a run of frames, often with ID3 tags.
`.OGG`	Ogg Vorbis audio	Open lossy audio: Vorbis packets carried in a sequence of Ogg pages.
MIDI & trackers
`.MID`	Standard MIDI File	Notes and timing for a synthesiser, in header and track chunks.
`.MOD`	Amiga ProTracker module	Amiga tracker song: 31 samples, an order table and 4-channel patterns.
`.XM`	FastTracker 2 Extended Module	PC tracker song: packed patterns and multi-sample instruments with envelopes.
Music projects
`.ALS`	Ableton Live Set	An Ableton Live project: gzip-compressed XML of tracks, clips and devices.
`.FLP`	FL Studio project	An FL Studio session: a short header, then one long stream of typed events.
Instruments & samples
`.SF2`	SoundFont 2	A bank of sampled instruments and presets for MIDI playback, in RIFF chunks.
Playlists
`.M3U`	M3U playlist	A plain text list of tracks, one path or URL per line, with optional #EXTINF details.