Timeline of audio formats

Okay kiddo, so let's imagine we are listening to music or audio from a story on a device like a radio, cassette tape or a CD player. These devices use different audio formats to save the audio and play it back to us.

First, we had the radio which played audio in an analog format. This means that the sound waves were transmitted through radio frequencies and then converted to sound by the radio's speakers.

Then, came the era of cassette tapes which were a type of analog audio format. Audio was recorded onto a magnetic tape and played back using a cassette player. The audio quality was not the best and the tapes were prone to wear and tear.

In the 1980s, compact discs (CDs) came along. They used a digital audio format, which means the sound was converted into a series of 0s and 1s and stored on the disc. CD players would then read the 0s and 1s and convert them back into sound. This format improved audio quality and was more durable than cassette tapes.

After CDs, we had digital audio files which allowed us to store music on our computers and portable devices like mp3 players. MP3s use a compressed digital format which makes the file size smaller while still maintaining good quality.

Nowadays, streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube use digital audio codecs like AAC or Ogg Vorbis to transmit audio over the internet. These formats are optimized for streaming and offer a high-quality listening experience even on low-bandwidth networks.

It's amazing to see how technology has evolved over the years to give us better quality audio.