Audio codec

An audio codec is a computer program that compresses/decompresses digital audio data according to a given audio file format or streaming audio format.

In some contexts, such as the AC97 "audio codec" the meaning is that a codec converts to/from analog audio, a combined audio AD/DA-converter, i.e. it is what most people would call a sound card.

See also

• audio data compression
• codec
• list of codecs