The following is a list of compression formats and related codecs.
Audio compression formats
Non-compression Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM, generally only described as PCM) is the format for uncompressed audio in media files and it is also the standard for CD-DA; note that in computers, LPCM is usually stored in container formats such as WAV, AIFF, or AU, or as raw audio format, although not technically necessary. FFmpeg Pulse-density modulation (PDM) Direct Stream Digital (DSD) is standard for Super Audio CD foobar2000 Super Audio CD Decoder (based on MPEG-4 DST reference decoder) FFmpeg (based on dsd2pcm) Pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM)
Lossless compression
Actively used Most popular Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), Version 1.1.2 Library of Congress libFLAC FFmpeg Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Apple QuickTime libalac FFmpeg Apple Music Monkey's Audio (APE) Monkey's Audio SDK FFmpeg (decoder only) OptimFROG (OFR) Tom's verlustfreier Audiokompressor (TAK) TAK SDK FFmpeg (decoder only) WavPack (WV) libwavpack FFmpeg True Audio (TTA) libtta FFmpeg Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMAL) Windows Media Encoder FFmpeg (decoder only) Other DTS-HD Master Audio, also known as DTS++ and DCA XLL libdca (decoder only) FFmpeg (decoder only) Dolby TrueHD Standard for DVD-Audio in Blu-ray (mathematically based on MLP) FFmpeg Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP), also known as Packed PCM (PPCM) Standard for DVD-Audio in DVD FFmpeg MPEG-4 Audio Lossless Coding (MPEG-4 ALS) SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) FFmpeg (decoding only) MPEG-4 Scalable Lossless Coding (MPEG-4 SLS) Parts of it are used in HD-AAC. SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) RealAudio Lossless RealPlayer FFmpeg (decoding only) BFDLAC (BFD Lossless Audio Compression). Ongoing development. FXpansion's BFD3 drum software. (2013-2017) L2HC - Huawei Huawei Music NearLink Huawei FreeBuds Oddball ATRAC Advanced Lossless (AAL) Extremely unpopular FFmpeg (lossy decoder only) Direct Stream Transfer (DST) - Only used for Direct Stream Digital SSC, DST, ALS and SLS reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001/Amd.10:2007) FFmpeg (decoder only) Original Sound Quality (OSQ) - Only used in WaveLab FFmpeg (decoding only) Discontinued Lossless Audio (LA) – No update for 10+ years Shorten (SHN)Shorten Lossless Audio Compression Format (SHN), Version 3.5.1 Library of Congress – Officially discontinued. libshn FFmpeg (decoding only) Lossless Predictive Audio Compression (LPAC) – Predecessor of MPEG-4 ALS Lossless Transform Audio Compression (LTAC) – Predecessor of LPAC MPEG-1 Audio Layer III HD (mp3HD) – Officially discontinued RK Audio (RKAU) – Officially discontinued FFmpeg (decoding only)
Lossy compression
Discrete cosine transform (DCT) Modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT, used in most of the audio codecs listed below)
General/Speech hybrid Unified Speech and Audio Coding (USAC, MPEG-D Part 3, ISO/IEC 23003-3) exhale (encoder only; open source) FFmpeg (decoder only; open source)FFmpeg 7.1 Released With VVC Decoder Promoted To Stable, Vulkan H.264/H.265 Encode. Phoronix. 30 September 2024. IETF standards: Opus (RFC 6716) based on SILK vocoder and CELT codec libopus FFmpeg (decoding and experimental encoding) IETF Internet Draft IPMR Speech CodecIPMR Speech Codec - draft-spiritdsp-ipmr-01.txt IETF - used in Spirit DSP's TeamSpirit Voice&Video EngineTeamSpirit Voice&Video Engine PC. Spirit DSP Alliance for Open Media Open Audio Codec (OAC; under-development) liboac
Neural audio codecs Lyra (codec) - used in Google Duo Lyra V2 - based on SoundStream neural codec Satin (used by Microsoft Teams) Facebook EnCodec WavTokenizerWavTokenizer: A Breakthrough Acoustic Codec Model Redefining Audio Compression. Marktechpost Media. September 3, 2024
General Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM, also called adaptive delta pulse-code modulation) Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC, used in MiniDisc devices) FFmpeg (decoder only) ATSC/ETSI standards: Dolby Digital (AC3, ATSC A/52, ETSI TS 102 366) FFmpeg liba52 (decoder only) Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3, ATSC A/52:2012 Annex E, ETSI TS 102 366 Annex E) FFmpeg DTS Coherent Acoustics (DTS, Digital Theatre System Coherent Acoustics, ETSI TS 102 114) FFmpeg libdca (decoder only) Dolby AC-4 (ETSI TS 103 190) Impala Blackbird audio codec ITU standards: G.719 G.722 FFmpeg G.722.1 (subset of Siren7) and G.722.1 Annex C (subset of Siren14) libg722_1 libsiren (part of libmsn and msn-pecan) G.722.2 3GPP TS 26.173 AMR-WB speech Codec (C-source code) reference implementation3GPP (2008-12-11) 3GPP TS 26.173 - AMR-WB speech Codec; version 8.0.0 Release 8, retrieved 2009-09-09 opencore-amr (decoder) VisualOn AMR-WB encoder FFmpeg (decoding only) EVS MPEG-1 Audio and MPEG-2 Audio layer I (MP1) (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5) FFmpeg (decoder only) layer II (MP2) (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5) FFmpeg tooLame (encoding only) twoLame (encoding only) layer III (MP3) (MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and non-ISO MPEG-2.5) FFmpeg (decoding only) LAME (encoding only) Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) (MPEG-2 Part 7) FAAC (encoder) and FAAD (decoder) FFmpeg iTunes Nero AAC Codec VisualOn AAC Encoder (a.k.a. libvo_aacenc) Fraunhofer FDK AAC libaacplus MPEG-4 Audio Advanced Audio Coding (AAC, MPEG-4 Part 3 subpart 4), HE-AAC and AAC-LD FAAC, FAAD2 FFmpeg iTunes Nero AAC Codec MPEG-4 AAC reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001) Harmonic and Individual Lines and Noise (HILN, MPEG-4 Parametric Audio Coding) MPEG-4 reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001) TwinVQ MPEG-4 reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001) FFmpeg (decoding only) BSAC (Bit-Sliced Arithmetic Coding) MPEG-4 reference software (ISO/IEC 14496-5:2001) MPEG-H MPEG-H 3D Audio Musepack (a.k.a. MPEGplus) Musepack SV8 Tools FFmpeg (decoding only) NICAM AT&T Perceptual Audio Coder Precision Adaptive Subband Coding (PASC; a variant of MP1; used in Digital Compact Cassette) QDesign (purchased by DTS) QDesign Music Codec used in Apple QuickTime FFmpeg (decoding only) PictureTel (purchased by Polycom) Siren 7 libg722_1 libsiren (part of libmsn and msn-pecan) FFmpeg (decoder only) Siren 14 libg722_1 vgmstream (decoder only) Siren 22 NTT TwinVQ FFmpeg (decoder only) NTT TwinVQ Encoder, NTT TwinVQ Player Voxware MetaSound (a variant of NTT TwinVQ) Windows Media Player (voxmsdec.ax) FFmpeg (decoder only) Vorbis aoTuV FFmpeg libvorbis Tremor (decoder only) Windows Media Audio (WMA) Windows Media Encoder FFmpeg ADC codec (Adaptive Differential Coding) Cook Codec (Cooker; RealAudio 6) FFmpeg (decoder only)
AES3 SMPTE 302M FFmpeg (decoder only) Dolby E FFmpeg (decoder only)
Bluetooth Bluetooth Special Interest Group Low Complexity Subband Coding (SBC) BlueZ's SBC library (libsbc) Fluoride Bluetooth stack (successor of BlueDroid) FFmpeg CVSD 8 kHz - used in Hands-Free Profile (HFP) modified SBC (mSBC) - used in Hands-Free Profile (HFP) BlueZ's SBC library (libsbc)Release of sbc-1.1, BlueZ Project, April 30, 2013 Fluoride Bluetooth stack FFmpeg SBC XQ PulseAudio's bluetooth stackPulseAudio 15 Released With Bluetooth Improvements, Better Hardware Support. Phoronix. July 28, 2021 (encoder only) PipeWire's bluetooth stackPipeWire: Bluetooth support status update. Collabora. April 29, 2022 (encoder only) LC3 (Low Complexity Communication Codec) Google's liblc3 (open source) - used in Android 13 and later ETSI LC3plus (ETSI TS 103 634) Google's liblc3 (open source) Qualcomm Technologies International (formerly CSR) aptX (a.k.a. apt-X) Qualcomm libaptXIntegration of the aptX and aptX-HD codecs for A2DP source, Android Open Source Project, January 4, 2017 FFmpeg aptX HD Qualcomm libaptXHD FFmpeg aptX Low Latency aptX Adaptive FastStream - a variant of SBC codec for bi-directional audio transmission Sony LDAC libldac (encoder only)The contribution of LDAC encoder, Android Open Source Project, January 10, 2017 - used in Android Oreo libldacdec (decoder only) HWA Alliance/Savitech LHDC HWA encoder/decoder LLAC HWA encoder/decoder HiBy Ultra Audio Transmission (UAT) Samsung Samsung HD/UHQ-BT codec Samsung Scalable codec Samsung Seamless codec MQA MQair
Digital radio Hybrid Digital Coding - used in HD Radio (a.k.a. NRSC-5) NRSC-5 receiver for rtl-sdr (decoder only) gr-nrsc5 (encoder only)
Voice
(low bit rate, optimized for speech) Linear predictive coding (LPC, used in most of the speech codecs listed below) Code-excited linear prediction (CELP) Algebraic code-excited linear prediction (ACELP) Xiph.Org Foundation Speex, patent freeSpeex Audio Codec, Version 1.2 Library of Congress libspeex FFmpeg (decoder only) Dialogic ADPCM (VOX) FFmpeg (decoder only) ITU standards: G.711 (a-law and μ-law companding; 64 kbit/s), also known as PCM of voice frequencies Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation FFmpeg (libavcodec) G.711.0 (G.711 LLC) G.711.1 (Wideband extension for G.711; 64/80/96 kbit/s) G.711.1D (Super-wideband extension for G.711.1; 96/112/128 kbit/s) G.718 (8/12/16/24/32 kbit/s) G.718B (Super-wideband extension for G.718; 28–48 kbit/s) G.719 G.721 (superseded by G.726; 32 kbit/s) Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation G.722 (SB-ADPCM; 48/56/64 kbit/s) FFmpeg G.722B (Super-wideband extension for G.722; 64/80/96 kbit/s) G.722.2 (AMR-WB) 3GPP TS 26.173 AMR-WB speech Codec (C-source code) reference implementation opencore-amr (decoder) FFmpeg (decoder only) G.723 (24 and 40 kbit/s DPCM, extension to G.721, superseded by G.726) Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation G.723.1 (MPC-MLQ or ACELP; 5.3/6.3 kbit/s) FFmpeg G.726 (ADPCM; 16/24/32/40 kbit/s) Sun Microsystems's public domain implementation FFmpeg (libavcodec) G.727 Sun Microsystems's public domain implementationFinding voice codecs for free software. Linux.com. October 14, 2005 G.728 (LD-CELP; 16 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) G.729 (CS-ACELP; 8 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) G.729a G.729b G.729ab G.729d (6.4 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) G.729e (11.8 kbit/s) G.729.1 (G.729 Annex J; Wideband extension for G.711; 8–32 kbit/s) G.729.1E (Super-wideband extension for G.729.1) Google internet Speech Audio Codec (iSAC) WebRTC Nellymoser Asao Codec FFmpeg (libavcodec) RealNetworks RealAudio 1 (VSELP 14.4 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) RealAudio 2 (LD-CELP 28.8 kbit/s) FFmpeg (decoder only) PictureTel PT716, PT716plus PictureTel PT724 RTAudio used by Microsoft Live Communication Server SVOPC used by Skype OpenLPC created by Future Dynamics HawkVoice (libHVDI) ANSI/SCTE ANSI/SCTE 24-21 2006 (BroadVoice16) BroadVoice Speech Codec Open Source C Code ANSI/SCTE 24-22 2013 (iLBCv2.0) ANSI/SCTE 24-23 2007 (BroadVoice32) BroadVoice Speech Codec Open Source C Code IETF RFCs: Internet Low Bit Rate Codec (iLBC, RFC 3951) developed by Global IP Solutions/Google WebRTC IETF Internet Draft SILK (used by Skype)SILK Speech Codec - draft-vos-silk-02 IETF CELT (developed by Xiph.Org Foundation)Constrained-Energy Lapped Transform (CELT) Codec - draft-valin-celt-codec-02 IETF libcelt MPEG-4 Audio MPEG-4 CELP MPEG-4 HVXC Skyphone MPLP Inmarsat INMARSAT-M IMBE Inmarsat Mini-M AMBE Meta MLow - used in Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.WhatsApp adds new features to the calling experience, including support for 32-person video calls. TechCrunch. June 13, 2024
Microsoft DirectPlay Those codecs are used by many PC games which use voice chats via Microsoft DirectPlay API. Voxware MetaVoice Windows Media Player (voxmvdec.ax) Truespeech Windows Media Player (tssoft32.acm) FFmpeg (decoder only) MS GSM Windows Media Player (msgsm32.acm) libgsm FFmpeg (decoder only) MS-ADPCM