This format was originally created as an alternative to mp3. The idea was to achieve a small file size with better sound quality. The first versions weren’t quite successful, but with the development of AAC, it became possible to store sound with less loss of quality, and with the same file sizes as that of mp3.

TTA is a simple and stable lossless audio data format for real-time compressing of digital music. Free and fully-functional for any use. It has a very simple structure. The TTA file header contains a unique format identifier, which is followed by meta-data block. Meta-data block contains minimal information which is needed for restoring the original stream (including number of channels, count of bits per sample, sample rate and overall number of samples in file, etc.) and ended by a 32-bit control sum. Following that header, we write one or more audio frames. Each frame is ended by a 32-bit control sum; a decoder may start decoding from any frame in the stream. The compressed samples of channels in a frame are located sequentially, as in a simple PCM data format.