Significant characteristics of audio files
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Main Page > Documentation > Format policies > Significant characteristics > Significant characteristics of audio files
This table lists properties and components taken from the Florida Digital Archive WAVE preservation Action Plan, available from http://fclaweb.fcla.edu/content/wave, with additional notes:
| property value | component | notes |
|---|---|---|
| duration | content | |
| number of channels | content | May be expressed as a number or as a description such as "mono", "stereo" or "surround" etc. |
| channel mapping | structure | For example, in stereo files, a channel number will be linked to either the left or the right ("channelNum="0" mapLocation="LEFT"/channelNum="1" mapLocation="RIGHT") |
| sampling frequency | rendering | This property may not be preserved through transformation to a preservation format, since conversion to WAV entails the use of a sampling frequency that is used by the WAV format (eg 441000 HZ, 48000 HZ, 96000 HZ). However, the sampling frequency of the preservation format should not be lower than that of the original format. |
| bit depth | rendering | The bit depth of the preservation format will be 16 bits unless the bit depth of the original format is higher (eg 24 bits). |