Using Audacity, I exported a 60-seconds long voice file into several file formats including MP3, Wav, Ogg Vorbis and AIFF extensions. The file sizes were as follows: 947KB, 2.54MB, 465KB and 2.54MB respectively. Which of these files is the most compacted file and why? Which one is the least compacted and why? I thought the compacted is Ogg Vorbis (465MB) and the least compacted are Wav and AIFF (2.54MB) each.

hello, these are just my two cents:

play and listen to each file to be sure that you are satisfied with the sound quality. usually, the higher file size like .WAV has the best sound quality, the smaller file size like Vorbis and MP3 would have slightly less sound quality.

some might argue that unless you have supersonic hearing, you can skip the wav format and go for compressed formats like MP3 instead.

i think it really depends on your preference and need for sound quality.

music and human voices are still very much great when saved into compressed formats like MP3. Also, MP3 format is very much portable and compatible with nearly all devices - phones, video players, and home speaker systems. MP3 also saves the smaller file size so you can store more sound files.

if you are specific about the sound quality and can spare storage space, then you may go to the WAV format as well -- im not sure but maybe you will be working on the sound file to some scientific measurement or analysis of the recorded sound and all ambient noises?

Thanks so much for your response.

Cheers
Tozar