Audio codec

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An audio codec is a hardware device or a computer program that

compresses/decompresses digital audio data according to a given audio file format or
streaming audio format. The term codec is a combination of 'coder-decoder'. The object
of a codec algorithm is to represent the high-fidelity audio signal with minimum number
of bits while retaining the quality. This can effectively reduce the storage space and the
bandwidth required for transmission of the stored audio file. Most codecs are
implemented as libraries which interface to one or more multimedia players, such as
XMMS, Winamp or Windows Media Player.

In some contexts, the term "audio codec" can refer to a hardware implementation or
sound card. When used in this manner, the phrase audio codec refers to the device
encoding an analog audio signal.

[edit] See also

• Audio compression (data)
• Codec
• Digital signal processing
• List of codecs
• Open source codecs and containers
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v•d•e
Data compression methods

Entropy · Complexity ·
Theory
Redundancy

Huffman · Adaptive
Huffman · Arithmetic
(Shannon-Fano ·
Entropy encoding
Range) · Golomb · Exp-
Golomb · Universal
Lossless
(Elias · Fibonacci)
compression
methods
RLE · DEFLATE · LZ
Family (LZ77/78 ·
Dictionary LZSS · LZW · LZWL ·
LZO · LZMA · LZX ·
LZJB · LZT)

CTW · BWT · PPM ·

Others
DMC

Convolution · Sampling ·
Theory
Nyquist–Shannon theorem

LPC (LAR · LSP) ·

WLPC · CELP · ACELP ·
Audio Audio codec parts A-law · μ-law · MDCT ·
compression Fourier transform ·
methods Psychoacoustic model

Dynamic range
compression · Speech
Others
compression · Sub-band
coding

Color space · Pixel ·

Terms Chroma subsampling ·
Compression artifact

Image RLE · Fractal · Wavelet ·

compression Methods EZW · SPIHT · DCT ·
methods KLT

Bit rate · Test images ·

Others PSNR quality measure ·