About the Wav file format
- Name
- WAVE Audio File
- Extension
- .wav
- Format
- Binary
- Category
- Audio
- Developer
- Microsoft
- Description
- A WAV file is an audio file that uses a standard digital audio file format utilized for storing waveform data. It allows audio recordings to be saved with different sampling rates and bitrates and is often saved in a 44.1 KHz, 16-bit, stereo format, which is the standard format used for CD audio.
- MIME Type
- audio/wav
- Sample
- sample.wav
- Wikipedia
- .wav on Wikipedia
It is also known as WAV or WAVE due to its filename extension. Waveform Audio File (WAV) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs that was developed by Microsoft and IBM. It is an instance of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) bitstream format method, which stores data in ‘chunks.’ It is similar to the 8SVX used on Amiga computers or the AIFF format used on Mac computers. RIFF acts as a “wrapper” for various audio coding formats.
It is the main format used on Microsoft Windows for raw and uncompressed audio. WAV files may contain compressed audio, but it’s known for uncompressed audio in the bitstream encoding format – linear pulse code modulation (LPCM). LPCM renders maximum audio quality since it is uncompressed and retains all samples of an audio track. It is, therefore, highly recommended by professional users and audio experts.
WAV files support compressed audio, on Microsoft Windows, using the Audio Compression Manager (ACM). Any ACM codec can compress a WAV file. The user interface (UI) for ACM may be accessed through a variety of programs that use it, including the Sound Recorder in some versions of Windows.
The WAV format is limited to files that are less than 4 GB because it uses a 32-bit unsigned integer to record the file size header. This corresponds to about 6.8 hours of CD-quality audio.
Almost all current browser versions support WAV files except Internet Explorer.
