Can someone explain the difference between Java AudioFormat and AudioFileFormat?

Question

The Java documentation says an AudioFormat "A data format tells you how to interpret a series of bytes of "raw" sampled audio data, such as samples that have already been read from a sound file, or samples that have been captured from the microphone input." For AudioFileFormat it says "A file format specifies the structure of a sound file, including not only the format of the raw audio data in the file, but also other information that can be stored in the file."

How does the "raw audio data" in the AudioFileFormat differ from the raw sampled data in the AudioFormat?

I'm sorry I just can't get this right in my head.

Thanks, TW

Answer 1

In a nutshell the AudioFileFormat provides information about the file itself such as file type, file length. The AudioFormat provides information about the actual data in the file such as frame size, sample rate, bit rate.