Popular audio formats can be categorized as lossy, lossless or uncompressed. Lossy compression discards data to save space, while lossless & uncompressed files retain quality.

Lossy: MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG VORBIS
These files are smaller which makes them easy to store & share. The audio data deleted during compression causes a loss of quality.

Lossless: FLAC, ALAC
These files don’t delete data during compression, but replace redundant data with instructions that allow your music player to rebuild the original file. This allows for a smaller file size while maintaining quality.

Uncompressed: WAV, AIFF
These raw audio files are large, but retain a higher quality sound.