Every Audio Format Explained in 9 Minutes

Every audio format explained in plain English — MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG Vorbis, ALAC and DSD. Lossless vs lossy, bitrates, file sizes and which audio format you should actually be using. If you've ever stared at a format dropdown and just guessed, this is the video that fixes it. No forty-minute deep dive, no audiophile gatekeeping — seven formats, what each one actually is, what it costs you in file size, and where it genuinely belongs. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 — Seven formats, nine minutes 0:17 — MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III, 1993) 1:32 — WAV (Waveform Audio File Format, 1991) 2:20 — FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec, 2001) 3:32 — AAC (Advanced Audio Coding, 1997) 4:35 — OGG Vorbis (Xiph.Org, 2000) 5:26 — ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec, 2004) 6:20 — DSD (Direct Stream Digital) 7:31 — The simple version + my recommendation 🎧 THE SHORT ANSWER Building a music library → FLAC, or ALAC if you live inside Apple Music. Need small files for your phone → AAC at 256 kbps, or MP3 at 320 kbps if it has to play on absolutely anything. Producing music or podcasts → work in WAV, export to whatever the platform demands. Wondering about DSD → you almost certainly don't need it. 📌 THINGS MOST VIDEOS GET WRONG WAV is a container, not a codec — it's a box, and what's normally inside is uncompressed PCM. "OGG" isn't a format. Ogg is the container; Vorbis is the codec. Apple devices play FLAC now. The old "iPhones can't do FLAC" advice is out of date — but Apple Music still won't let you add FLAC to your library, which is exactly why ALAC exists. FLAC and ALAC are not a quality contest. Decode the same source to both and the audio data is identical. It's a platform choice. A bigger number on the box doesn't mean better sound. DSD's sample rate is enormous, and it still doesn't beat a well-mastered FLAC on a normal setup. ▶️ NEXT Still not sure whether any of this is audible on your setup? That's the next video — can you actually hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC, and what the evidence really shows. 🔍 ABOUT THE VOICE The narration is AI. The research isn't. Every script is written, fact-checked and edited by a human before a single word gets synthesized, and specs, dates and bitrates are verified against primary sources rather than scraped off a forum thread. Spot an error and I'll pin the correction. 💬 Which format is your library sitting in right now? Tell me in the comments — genuinely curious how many of us are still hauling around MP3s from 2007. 🔔 New video every week. Subscribe if you want the rest of the series. #AudioFormats #FLACvsMP3 #LosslessAudio