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Audio in WAV files can be encoded in a variety of audio coding formats, such as GSM or MP3, to reduce the file size. Though a WAV file can contain compressed audio, the most common WAV audio format is uncompressed audio in the linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) format. In a comparison of compressed audio formats, FFmpeg's FLAC implementation was noted to have the fastest and most efficient embedded decoder of any modern lossless audio format. The technical strengths of FLAC compared to other lossless formats lie in its ability to be streamed and decoded quickly, independent of compression level. The usual bitstream encoding is the linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) format. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio. Waveform Audio File Format is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs.
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Digital audio compressed by FLAC's algorithm can typically be reduced to 50-60% of its original size and decompress to an identical copy of the original audio data. Audio/vnd.wave, audio/wav, audio/wave, audio/x-wavįLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, and is also the name of the reference codec implementation.
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