Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive communication and low-complexity enough for low-end ARM3 processors. Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

AU is a file extension for a sound file format belonging to Sun, NeXT and DEC and used in UNIX. The AU file format is also known as the Sparc-audio or u-law fomat. AU files contain three parts: the audio data and text for a header (containing 24 bytes) and an annotation block.