Space Saving Archive Format

Question

I was in a debate with some game designers I work with about the best archiving format.

What it inevitably came down to was a really dumb test, in which the results were futile in producing a winner since all archive formats compress different kinds of data differently anyway.

They use .7z for their game data archiving when I have always just used .zip or .rar (which I was chastised for being too 1990's)

For example - movie files, .7z actually produces a higher file size than the folder containing the movies that its archiving. However, for the programmers needs, it crams it into a nice little file size.

So my question is:

Whats the best archiving format for STRICTLY audio? Whats our format for squeezing every little last bit of space? Whats our .7z?

If anyone wants to see the community source list of formats - just check the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archive_formats

• C3

Answer 1

StuffIt's SITX has algorithms for compressing uncompressed audio formats built into their format, and I've known a lot of people who use it when Digidelivery/Aspera isn't an option and we have to resort to FTP et al.

Luckily they are now Win and Mac (used to be Mac only), so it's become a universal format, although not quite as deeply-compatible as say ZIP, which almost all OS formats can natively decopmress (if not also compress).