List of codecs
The following is a list of compression formats and related codecs. Audio compression formats Non-compression Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM, generally only described as PCM) is the format for uncompressed audio in media files and it is also the standard for CD-DA; note that in computers, LPCM is usually stored in container formats such as WAV, AIFF, or AU, or as raw audio format, although not technically necessary. FFmpeg Pulse-density modulation (PDM) Direct Stream Digital (DSD) is standard for Super Audio CD foobar2000 Super Audio CD Decoder (based on MPEG-4 DST reference decoder) FFmpeg (based on dsd2pcm) Pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) Lossless compression Actively used Most popular Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) libFLAC FFmpeg Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Apple QuickTime libalac FFmpeg Apple Music Monkey's Audio (APE) Monkey's Audio SDK FFmpeg (decoder only) OptimFROG (OFR) Tom's verlustfreier Audiokompressor (TAK) TAK SDK FFmpeg (decoder only) WavPack (WV) libwavpack FFmpeg True Audio (TTA) libtta FFmpeg Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMAL) Windows Media Encoder FFmpeg (decoder only) Other DTS-HD Master Audio, also known as DTS++ and DCA XLL libdca (decoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only) Dolby TrueHD Standard for DVD-Audio in Blu-ray (mathematically based on MLP) FFmpeg Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP), also known as Packed PCM (PPCM) Standard for DVD-Audio in DVD FFmpeg MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding (MPEG-4 ALS) SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) FFmpeg (decoding only) MPEG-4 Scalable Lossless Coding (MPEG-4 SLS) Parts of it are used in HD-AAC. SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) RealAudio Lossless RealPlayer FFmpeg (decoding only) BFDLAC (BFD Lossless Audio Compression). Ongoing development. FXpansion's BFD3 drum software. (2013-2017) Oddball ATRAC Advanced Lossless (AAL) Extremely unpopular FFmpeg (lossy decoder only) Direct Stream Transfer (DST) - Only used for Direct Stream Digital SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) FFmpeg (decoder only) Original Sound Quality (OSQ) - Only used in WaveLab FFmpeg (decoding only) Discontinued Lossless Audio (LA) – No update for 10+ years Shorten (SHN) – Officially discontinued. libshn FFmpeg (decoding only) Lossless Predictive Audio Compression (LPAC) – Predecessor of MPEG-4 ALS Lossless Transform Audio Compression (LTAC) – Predecessor of LPAC MPEG-1 Audio Layer III HD (mp3HD) – Officially discontinued RK Audio (RKAU) – Officially discontinued FFmpeg (decoding only) Bluetooth lossless •aptX Lossless (1.2Mbps/96Khz) -successor of aptX Adaptive 22 runs in 1,200kbps in 96khz sampling rate, still under development or use is scarce, made by Snapdragon sound Lossy compression Discrete cosine transform (DCT) Modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT, used in most of the audio codecs listed below) General/Speech hybrid Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC, MPEG-D Part 3, ISO/IEC 23003-3) exhale (encoder only; open source) IETF standards: Opus (RFC 6716) based on SILK vocoder and CELT codec libopus FFmpeg (decoding and experimental encoding) IETF Internet Draft IPMR Speech Codec - used in Spirit DSP's TeamSpirit Voice&Video Engine Neural audio codecs Lyra (codec) - used in Google Duo Lyra V2 - based on SoundStream neural codec Satin (used by Microsoft Teams) Facebook EnCodec General Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM, also called adaptive