Know your digital audio formats

There was a time when all you had to worry about was music coming on CD, cassette or vinyl and telling them apart was obvious.

Today, for mere mortals, making sense of the many digital audio formats isn't easy. Telling the difference between MP3, WMA and WAV files isn't always clear and determining each format's advantages and limitations takes some homework, too.

To demystify some of the jargon, we've put together this Audio Formats 101 that covers most of the basic formats that people encounter on their computers. We won't go so far as to say which formats work best (that's a judgement call everyone needs to make for themselves), but you'll get a sense of which formats work on the iPod, and some clues for how those WMA files got in your music collection.

(All images were sourced from CNET.com)

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