4 May 2026 | 7 min read
Audio file formats explained: what to record, what to edit, what to deliver
Six formats, three jobs. Recording, editing and delivery each want something different, and picking wrong costs you either quality or a very long upload.
Most format arguments online are about which one sounds best. On a production, the more useful question is which one fits the job in front of you. A recording format, an editing format and a delivery format are three different decisions.
The uncompressed pair: WAV and AIFF
WAV and AIFF store raw PCM samples. Nothing is thrown away, nothing is reconstructed on playback. WAV is the de facto standard on set because Broadcast Wave adds the metadata chunk that carries timecode, scene, take and track names. AIFF is its Apple-born equivalent and remains common in music rooms.
Both are large. A minute of 48 kHz 24 bit stereo is roughly 17 MB, and an eight track poly WAV of the same minute is four times that. This is the price of not making any decisions about your audio yet.
The lossless compressed pair: FLAC and ALAC
FLAC and ALAC shrink files by around 40 to 60 percent and decode back to bit identical PCM. They are excellent for archiving a finished library and for sending large sets of material without quality loss. They are less convenient inside a timeline, where some editors still refuse them.
The lossy group: MP3, M4A/AAC and Opus
These discard information the encoder judges inaudible. MP3 at 320 kbps is fine for a client review or a rough mix reference. AAC in an M4A container is more efficient at the same bitrate and is what most cameras and phones write. Opus is the most efficient of the three and dominates web conferencing and streaming.
The rule that saves projects: never edit from a lossy file if a lossless original exists, and never re-encode a lossy file twice.
A workflow that just works
- Record: WAV, 48 kHz, 24 bit, Broadcast Wave with timecode.
- Edit: WAV or AIFF mono stems, one file per source.
- Archive: FLAC of the original poly files, metadata intact.
- Review: MP3 at 320 kbps or M4A, small enough to email.
- Deliver: whatever the spec sheet says, at the sample rate of the picture.
You can move between all of these in the browser here. Drop a file, check what is actually inside it in the inspector, then export to the format the next step in the chain expects. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.