WAVE or WAV, short for Waveform Audio File Format, (rarely also named Audio for Windows) is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs.

It is an application of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in “chunks”, and thus is also close to the 8SVX and the AIFF format used on Amiga and Macintosh computers, respectively. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio. The usual bitstream encoding is the Linear Pulse Code Modulation (LPCM) format.

Both WAVs and AIFFs are compatible with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems. The format takes into account some differences of the Intel CPU such as little-endian byte order. The RIFF format acts as a “wrapper” for various audio compression codecs.

Though a WAV file can hold compressed audio, the most common WAV format contains uncompressed audio in the linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) format. The standard audio file format for CDs, for example, is LPCM-encoded, containing two channels of 44,100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample. Since LPCM uses an uncompressed storage method which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality. WAV audio can also be edited and manipulated with relative ease using software. The WAV format supports compressed audio, using, on Windows, the Audio Compression Manager. Any ACM codec can be used to compress a WAV file. The UI for Audio Compression Manager may be accessed through various programs that use it, including Sound Recorder in some versions of Windows.

Beginning with Windows 2000, a WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE header was defined which specifies multiple audio channel data along with speaker positions, eliminates ambiguity regarding sample types and container sizes in the standard WAV format and supports defining custom extensions to the format chunk.

There have been some WAVE format inconsistencies reported, for example how 8-bit data is unsigned, but 16-bit data is signed; and many of chunks duplicate the same information found in other chunks. WAV file can contain imbedded IFF "List"s, that may contain several "sub-chunks".

Uncompressed WAV files are quite large in size, so, as file sharing over the Internet has become popular,[citation needed] the WAV format has declined in popularity.[citation needed] However, it is still a commonly used file type, suitable for retaining “first generation” archived files of high quality, for use on a system where disk space is not a constraint, or in applications such as audio editing, where the time involved in compressing and uncompressing data is a concern.

More frequently, the smaller file sizes of compressed but lossy formats such as Ogg Vorbis, MP3, ATRAC, AAC, Musepack and WMA are used to store and transfer audio. Their small file sizes allow faster Internet transmission, as well as lower consumption of space on memory media. However, lossy formats trade off smaller file size against loss of audio quality, as all such compression algorithms compromise available signal detail. There are also lossless codecs, such as FLAC, Shorten, Monkey's Audio, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, Apple Lossless, WMA Lossless, TTA, and WavPack, but none of these is yet a ubiquitous standard for either professional or home audio.

Read more about WAV files.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV