The following tables compare general and technical information for a variety of audio coding formats.
For listening tests comparing the perceived audio quality of audio formats and codecs, see the article Codec listening test.
Audio compression format Creator First public release date Latest stable version Cost Proprietary implementations (codecs) Open-source implementations (codecs) Uses(2023-07-14)
Free ? c2enc, c2dec Low bandwidth HF/VHF digital radio, VoIP trunking No Yes No No No Encodec Facebook 2022-10-25 v0.1.1(2022-10-26)
Free ? Encodec Speech, VoIP, voice recording Yes Yes No ? No Enhanced AC-3 (E-AC-3) Dolby Laboratories 2004 ATSC A52:2018 Non-free Digital television FFmpeg Theatrical movie presentation, digital TV service & home-video (personal recorders, DVD, etc.) No No No Yes Yes EVS Fraunhofer, JVC Kenwood, NTT, NTT Docomo, Panasonic, Ericsson 2014 ? Non-free ? ? ? ? Yes Yes No Yes No FLAC Xiph.Org Foundation, Josh Coalson 2001-07-20 1.5.0(2025-02-11)
Free FLAC,[11] Flake[12] (encoding only), FFmpeg, FLACCL[13] (encoding only), Audiocogs[14] (decoding only) Music archival[15] Yes No Yes No No G.711 ITU-T 1972 (ITU-T standard from 1988) G.711 Appendix II (02/00) Free Various proprietary VoIP software FFmpeg, Ekiga, Asterisk (PBX) and almost any VoIP software voice recording No Yes No No No G.722 ITU-T 1988-11 Free Various proprietary VoIP software Asterisk (PBX), QuteCom, FFmpeg voice recording No Yes No No No G.722.1 ITU-T 1999-09 G.722.1 (05/05) Free[16][17] Various proprietary VoIP software FreeSWITCH,[18] PJSIP, etc voice recording No Yes No Yes No G.722.2(2004-02-08)
Free Winamp with old plugin version, foobar2000 with old plugin version ? Music archival Yes No Yes No No LC3 Bluetooth SIG 2022-04-11 1.03(2023-05-09)
Free ? liblc3, Android 13, BlueZ Speech Yes Yes No ? No LDAC Sony Corp. 2015-04 ? Non-free Sony Walkman, Sony Products, mobile phones libldacdec, Android 8 (encoding only), BlueZ (encoding only) Bluetooth audio Yes No No Yes No LHDC Savitech 2017 5.0.6 (2022-08-03) Non-free Mobile phones, Bluetooth headphones, Home receivers Android 10 Bluetooth audio Yes No Yes Yes No L2HC Huawei 2020 3.0 (2023-09-19) Non-free Huawei products, EMUI, HarmonyOS Android 10, OpenHarmony, Oniro OS Bluetooth audioNearLink audio
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Lyra Google 2021-04-06 1.32 / V3(2022-12-21)
Free Google Duo Lyra Speech, VoIP, voice recording Yes Yes No ? No Monkey's Audio Matthew T. Ashland 2000 11.19(2025-06-26)
Free Monkey's Audio, FFmpeg (decoding only) Music Archival Yes No Yes No No MP1 (MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer I) ISO/IEC MPEG Audio Committee 1991-12-06 ISO/IEC 11172-3, ISO/IEC 13818-3 Free ? FFmpeg (decoding only) - Yes No No Expired No MP2 (MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer II) ISO/IEC MPEG Audio Committee 1993 ISO/IEC 11172-3, ISO/IEC 13818-3 Free[24] various DVD software, video software, audio software TooLAME (encoding only), TwoLAME (encoding only), FFmpeg DAB, DVB, DVD, VCD, SVCD Yes No No Free[25] No MP3 (MPEG-1/2/2.5 Audio Layer III) ISO/IEC MPEG Audio Committee 1993 ISO/IEC 11172-3, ISO/IEC 13818-3 Free FhG, l3enc, MP3enc, (old implementations: Xing TOMPG, SCMPX) LAME (encoding only), FFmpeg (decoding only), libmad (decoding only), Audiocogs[26] (decoding only), (old implementations: BladeEnc) - Yes No No Expired[27] Yes (optional, rarely used) MPEG-H 3D Audio ISO/IEC MPEG Audio Committee 2013-01 ISO/IEC 23008-3 Non-free FhG, MainConcept (encoding only) libmpegh, mpeghdec (decoding only) Digital TV service, voice recording Yes No No Yes No Musepack Frank Klemm/MDT 1997 1.30(2009-04-02)
Free Musepack,[28] FFmpeg (decoding only) - Yes No No No No Nellymoser Asao Nellymoser Inc. 2002 ? Non-free Adobe Flash, Flash Player FFmpeg voice recording No No No Yes ? OptimFROG Florin Ghido 2001-12-16 5.100 (2016-09-02) Free OptimFROG and some media players (decoding only). Some media players (decoding only) Music archival Yes No Yes No No Opus Xiph.Org Foundation, Internet Engineering Task Force 2012-09-11 RFC 6716 (libopus 1.5.1) Free libopus, FFmpeg Speech, VoIP, Low latency, Studio/transmitter link, wireless audio, voice recording, WebRTC Yes Yes No Yes[29] No OSQ Steinberg 2002 ? Free WaveLab FFmpeg (decoding only) Music archival Yes No Yes No No QOA Dominic Szablewski 2023-02-02 1.0(2023-04-24)
Free qoa, FFmpeg (decoding only) - Yes Yes No No No Sac Sebastian Lehmann 2006-09-01 v0.7.18 (2025-04-14) Free Sac Music archival Yes No Yes No No Satin Microsoft 2020 ? Non-free Microsoft Teams, Skype ? Speech, VoIP, voice recording Yes Yes No Yes No SBC Bluetooth SIG 2003 A2DP 1.3 (2012-07-24) Free for Bluetooth A2DP BlueZ, FFmpeg Bluetooth audio Yes No No Yes No Shorten Tony Robinson 1993-03-30 3.6.1(2007-03-19, final release)
Free Shorten FFmpeg (decoding only) - Yes No Yes No (with commercial use restriction)[30][31] No SILK Skype Limited 2009-01-07 Merged into Opus Free Skype SILK Speech Codec voice recording No Yes No Yes ? Siren 7 PictureTel Corp. (now Polycom Inc.) 1999 ?[16][17] Microsoft Office Communicator FreeSWITCH (libg722_1,[32] aMSN (libsiren - part of libmsn),[33][34] FFmpeg (decoding only) voice recording No Yes No Yes ? SNAC Hubert Siuzdak 2024-02-20 1.2 (2024-04-04) Free SNAC Speech, VoIP, voice recording Yes Yes No No No Speex Xiph.Org Foundation, Jean-Marc Valin 2003-03-24 1.2.0 (obsoleted by Opus) Free Adobe Flash Player 10 Speex,[35] FFmpeg with libspeex library voice recording No Yes No No No SVOPC Skype Limited 2007-03-28 2008-09-23 (Skype 3.8) (replaced by SILK) Non-free Skype voice recording No Yes No Yes No Tom's lossless Audio Kompressor (TAK) Thomas Becker 2007-01-26 2.3.3(2022-06-30)
Free Winamp with TAK plugin, foobar2000 with plugin, XMPlay FFmpeg (decoding only) Music archival Yes No Yes No No TSAC Fabrice Bellard 2024-04-08 2024-04-08 Free No TSAC, Linux: [2], Windows (experimental): [3]. Does encoding and decoding in one app, no separate encoder and decoder Speech, VoIP, voice recording Yes Yes No No No True Audio (TTA) TAU Software 1999 2.3(2015-02-24)
Free TTA,[36] FFmpeg - Yes No Yes No No TwinVQ Nippon Telegraph and Telephone 1996 (?) Non-free Winamp with VQF plugin, NTT TwinVQ player/encoder, Yamaha SoundVQ player, Nero Media Player FFmpeg (decoding only)[37] speech Yes No No Yes ? USAC Fraunhofer IIS 2012 4.4.0(2023-06-21)
Non-free ? EZ CD Audio Converter, FFmpeg with Mainconcept plugin (encoder only), Sonnox, Apple (decoder only), QuickTime (Mac version & decoder only). Exhale (encoder only), FFmpeg (decoding only with Fraunhofer FDK AAC library enabled for manually command, native decoding only), Android (decoder only) - Yes No No No No Vorbis (Ogg) Xiph.Org Foundation 2000-05-11 1.3.7(2020-07-04)
Free libvorbis,[38] aoTuV,[39] FFmpeg - Yes No No No No WavPack Conifer Software 1998 5.8.1(2025-01-18)
Free WavPack,[40] FFmpeg Music archival Yes No Yes No No Windows Media Audio Microsoft 1999 11.0 Free forRetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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