Whats the difference between MIDIs, WAVs and AU files?
MIDI’s, WAV’s and AU’s are all audio file formats. There are some differences though: A MIDI file (a file that ends with the extension .mid) is essentially a small file with instructions that tell your sound card how to play a song. The better your sound card, the better it will sound. All of the actual playing is done on your computer. You cannot ‘record’ existing sounds with MIDI. A WAV file (a file that ends with the extension .wav) is a digital recording of a sound or song. It is much like a cassette tape or cdrom. Because there is so much information contained in .wav’s these files tend to be HUGE. (Long .wav’s can be anywhere from 500k to 3 MEGS or more!) An AU file is similar to a WAV file. It is used to record pre-existing sound, but records the sound in a more efficient format. AU files tend to be much smaller in size than WAV recordings of the same sound are. This is handy for using on web pages as background sounds when download time is a consideration.
