Looking down the list of Pro Tools' file-types while making a session, there is:
WAV AIFF SD II QuickTime Sound Resource MXF
I have only ever used WAV.
What do you guys use and why do you consider it "the best"?
My guess it's just a system compatibility thing. Like both PCs and Macs can use WAVs so that gets the most use.
Or could it be an actual sonic difference?
See sources at the bottom :)
AIFF and WAV both store PCM data and support meta tagging. WAV seems to have a size limit of 4Gb but nothing is mentioned about AIFF.
SD II works differently, it is non-destructive as it stores the audio samples and separately the parameters of transformations. It is a Digidesign format, not really compatible with anything else from what I understand.
"MXF has full timecode and metadata support". It seems to be quite new and supports more elements than the previous formats (wrappers) I discussed.
Can't find anything exciting on QuickTime and Sound Resource, all I can say is that QuickTime is a wrapper, pretty much like AIFF and WAV except it does video as well and a lot more codecs.
if I'm not wrong BWF WAV is actually the official recommendation for audio exchange and archiving. ITU BR.1574 among others.. also the nice AES people have standardised the RF64 riff chunk so WAV can hold more than 4GB of data.
For the ability to embed metadata alone, WAV gets my vote. I remember not too long ago going back and forth referring to printed catalogs and cuing up the CD changer to load FX. Ugh, no thanks. No more.
I haven't had much experience with MXF, but as far as the rest of them go. WAV.
No sonic different to my ears between wav, aiff, and SD2. I'd stick with wav as it has become the industry standard (SD2 is dying for sure) and you can embed metadata nicely in them.
Im not completely sure on AIFF but what Ive heard over the years: AIFF, the original apple audio file (?)
SD2, an AIFF with timestamping, developed for interop between PT and media composer. mac only.
Wav, the microsoft file
BWF, a wav with a monstrous, agreed, standardised metadata chunk, which is malleable, developed for archiving and longevity, as already mentioned - recommended as a standard, works on mac and pc.
MXF is the Media Exchange Format wrapper, and is in a "non-divergence" metadata agreement with the Advanced Authoring format, the AAF (more open version of OMF). Its Avids native video media wrapper, and sometimes audio comes across with an MXF wrapper as well.
Many broadcasters are going to full MXF output, wrapping it around production assets with video as mpeg longop and audio as dolby E streams being fed into playout servers.
Key thing - if you are in film, you want BWF, untampered, all the way from production through to you. If video change it to AIFF you may lose critical metadata from the BEXT chunk and iXML chunk.
My 2 cents: "Sir, please away from the SD2. Sir, I repeat, please turn around gently and slowly step away from the SD2 right now"
Justin has all the right answers. As a note WAV/AIFF and SDII are ALL Linear PCM schemes... which means there are technically no sonic differences between them -given the same source material, bit depth and samplerate - the 1's and 0's are the same. The difference is in the way they "package" this data with the metadata and what metadata. Quicktime and MXF can wrap encoded files (i.e MP3, MP4, AAC, etc, etc...) as well as straight Linear PCM - although BWF is the recommended format for MXF, so it's possible to have different sonic qualities. IF you want the technical nitty gritty on MXF you can find it here
Me, I've stuck to the Wave-format mainly because it's a good format and I've never really had any reason to change, as well as I'm very fond of the Broadcast Wave File-extension :-) When it comes to compressed formats I shun em' as the plague...with the style of design-work and over all sound editing I usually work by my computer already hates me as it is, I don't really wanna strain the processor even more no matter how small... /CvanC
