This section provides basic information on WAV, WaveForm audio format.
What is WAV? WAV is a short name for WaveForm, which is audio file format
developed by Microsoft and IBM.
A WAV file name has the file extension of .wav.
The original WAV file format contains uncompressed audio data
using the same encoding method, PCM (Pulse-Code Modulation), as audio CDs.
So uncompressed WAV file size matches audio track sizes on audio CDs.
WAV files may also be encoded with a variety of codecs (coder and decoder)
to compress audio data. A WAV file encoded with the mp3 codec may reduce
the audio data to the same level as a MP3 file.
Roughly, uncompressed WAV files takes about 10MB space per 1 minute of play time.
Here is how to calculate space requirement based on PCM specifications:
16 bits per sample
44,100 samples per second
60 seconds per minute
2 channels for stereo sound
1 minute stereo sound requires:
2 * 60 * 44,100 * 16 bits
= 2 * 60 * 44,100 * 2 bytes
= 10,584,000 bytes = 10 MB
