What is a WAV File?

type of sound file. Microsoft and IBM introduced the wav file in 1991 for use on the Microsoft Windows 3.1 operation system (OS). Long before digital audio became a staple, computer users were exposed to the wav file as an embedded sound file that played a chime-like sound at boot up of the Windows operating system.

The wav format is based on the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), which stores audio files in indexed “chunks” and “sub-chunks.” RIFF is in turn based on the earlier Interchange File Format (IFF), established by Electronic Arts in 1985 for use in electronic gaming. Apple’s version, known as Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF), was released in 1988 for Macintosh computers. Due to the common roots of these various audio formats, however, the audio files will play on any computer system, IBM or Apple.

The wav file had two very big things going for it when introduced. Firstly, it could digitize sounds 100% faithful to the original source because it is a lossless format. “Lossless” means that the wav file format does not compromise audio quality even when it holds compressed data. Secondly, the wav file is very easy to edit and manipulate with software. Luckily for audiophiles, free wav file editing software has been available nearly as long as wav files themselves.

While the wav file format was ideal for sound effects, it had a drawback when it came to music files.
One four-minute song could easily consume over 35 megabytes (MB) of space when saved as a wav file. Though the cost of hard drives dropped over the years, the wav file format was still too large for portable players with limited flash memory, which would become ubiquitous by the new millennium. Additionally, wav files were not the most practical format to transfer online, especially over slow dial-up connections.

Instead, the compressed MP3 format took the audio stage. Songs saved in the MP3 format produced audio files a mere fraction of the size of wav files. The MP3 format is a lossy format, however, which means the smaller file size does trade-off some loss of audio quality. While the MP3 format is a good fit for portable players, many people continued to store their main digital libraries in wav file format. By doing so, the wav file could be used as a master to create other types of audio files (including MP3s), while the original wav file remained preserved for direct listening or burning to compact disk (CD).

Today the wav file format is still widely used to archive music files in a lossless format where space is not an issue. Some CD and DVD players can also read wav files copied directly to a compact disk. More often, software that burns the files to CD will convert them in the process to the Compact Disk Audio (.cda) format, making the audio CD compatible with all players.