Alcorn Mcbride AM-4, Hardware And Software Reference Manual

Page: 47 / 77

File Types and Storage 41
File Types and Storage
The AM-4 Digital Audio Machine plays both MP3 encoded audio files and
uncompressed WAV files. MP3 filenames have a “.MP3” extension and WAV files
have a “.WAV” extension. Please refer to the Required File Name Formats section
of this manual for details on file naming conventions.
Supported WAV File Formats
Note: GPS operation
does not support the
playback of WAV files.
WAV files are commonly referred to as “uncompressed” audio files, and contain
the raw audio samples recorded from the original source. For example, an audio
file “ripped” directly from a CD results in a 44.1Khz, 16-bit, stereo WAV file.
Often this file is then encoded and compressed into an MP3 file to save storage
space, but the AM-4 can playback the uncompressed WAV version.
The AM-4 can playback any 8 or 16-bit WAV file, either stereo or mono, with
the following sample rates:
.
Supported Sample
Rates(Khz)
8
11.025
16
22.050
32
44.1
48
Note that a WAV file
can take up a
considerable amount of
storage space on your
Compact Flash card
compared with its MP3
encoded equivalent. The lower the sample rate, the lower the resulting sound quality. Also, 8-bit
WAV files will normally not sound as good as 16-bit WAV files. It is generally
not a good practice to try and save storage space by using lower sample rate or 8-
bit WAV files instead of encoding original high-resolution files to MP3.
If you have the storage space, and have the original, high-resolution
uncompressed WAV file there is no reason not to use it just as it is on the AM-4.