Audio Recording Formats & Quality

A variety of factors will affect the quality of a digitally recorded audio file; most notably the sampling bit rate (how often the audio signal is sampled, expressed here as Kbps ) and how, or if, it is compressed.  Higher sample rates result in better sound quality but larger files, and compressed files will be smaller but have slightly less quality then uncompressed files. Different compression formats can also affect the quality.

The following formats are available in RealOne Player for saving CD tracks (ripping) or recording from analog sources:

FORMAT

FILE EXTENSION

AVAILABLE QUALITY LEVELS

COMMENTS

RealAudio 8

.rjm

32 - 352 Kbps Stereo

Highest quality, native format from RealNetworks.

MP3

.mp3

56 -320 Kbps Stereo, 32 Kbps Mono.

High Bit-rate (128-320 kbps) format is a RealOne Premium Feature.

WAV Audio

.wav

1411 Kbps Stereo

Raw, uncompressed files.