File extension | .m4r |
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File category | Audio |
Stands for | MPEG-4 PART 14 for iPhone ringtones |
Developer | Apple Inc. |
Overview | M4R is one of the extensions of MPEG-4 Part-14 and it is specially designed by Apple for iPhone ringtones. It is just the relabelling of AAC and M4A. This extension provides an excellent quality of ringtones for iPhones and the size of the ringtone is also small. There are certain steps that one needs to follow for the conversion of any song into this format (iPhone ringtone). Firstly, select any song of 30 seconds and covert it to AAC format using iTunes. Then rename this file using .m4r extension. Finally, by using the iTunes transfer your ringtone file to iPhone. This can be done by connecting your iPhone to the computer and syncing the playlist. Now a user can easily use this ringtone for phone ring, alerts, alarms etc. It should be noted that these files will be supported only by the latest version. Hence, use the current version of iTunes. |
Technical description | It uses a lossy compression algorithm to encode the ringtones that is same as AAC and MP3 eareensions. But it has the additional feature of auditory masking which means it neglects other sounds which can be detected or recognized while listening or hearing another sound. It only discards the information which is surplus for the human ear. This results in good quality of iPhone ringtones. It takes less storage space without affecting the quality of audio. It is also a segment of MPEG-4 standard and this is stated in the ISO-IEC standard 14495-3. |
Links | wikipedia.org (opens in new tab - official documentation) |
File extension | .wav |
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File category | Audio |
Stands for | Waveform Audio File Format |
Developer | Microsoft and IBM |
Overview | WAV or WAVE is an audio format which was developed to store audio files on personal computers. These files include music, spoken or speech audios and sound effects. The size of the files in this codec is very large as it does not use a lossy format like MP3. This is the main reason why this format has lost its popularity. Due to its size, it is hard to transfer files over the internet which had resulted in less acceptance. This format is supported by many programs like a window Media player. Therefore, these audio files can be played using aforesaid software. One can not completely ignore this format as it provides high quality of audios. Due to this, it is used for radio broadcasting. |
Technical description | This format supports metadata that is why we can add details using information chunk. Data in this codec is stored in chunks as it is an application of RIFF(Resource interchange file format). Furthermore, LPCM(Linear pulse code modulation) is the most common, uncompressed audio format in this, but it can also store compressed audio like MP3. Also, it is especially used by professionals as LPCM audio format offers a maximum quality. Only files up to 4 GB are supported by this format which is one of the limitations in this format. This is because of 32-bit unsigned integer which carries the file size header. To overcome this, W64 format came into existence which can record long audios as it enables 64-bit header. |
Links | wikipedia.org (opens in new tab - official documentation) |