What is a .tta file?
True Audio Lossless File · Audio · Aleksander Djourik (Tau Software)
A .tta file is True Audio, a free lossless audio codec built for fast, simple compression of CD rips. It compresses less than FLAC's best settings but encodes quickly, and files start with the tag TTA1.
What is a .tta file used for?
TTA had its moment in the 2000s CD-archiving scene, often as one big album file plus a .cue sheet. It is lossless, so decoding restores the CD audio bit for bit, and it supports ID3 tags.
FLAC won that ecosystem battle: hardware and streaming support for TTA is thin today. The format still decodes fine in foobar2000, VLC and ffmpeg, which is also the conversion route to FLAC.
How to open a .tta file
The .tta format opens in the following apps, grouped by operating system. If one app does not work, try another from the same list. For a step-by-step walkthrough, see how to open a .tta file.
Windows
- foobar2000
- VLC
- AIMP
macOS
- VLC
- ffmpeg
Linux
- VLC
- DeaDBeeF
- ffmpeg
How to convert a .tta file
You can convert a .tta file to flac, wav, mp3 using a conversion tool or the export menu of an app that opens it.
.tta file signature (magic bytes)
Programs recognise a .tta file by the bytes at the start of the file, not by its name. These are the signatures for TTA. For a full breakdown, see the TTA file signature page.
| Hex signature | Offset | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 54 54 41 31 | 0 | ASCII 'TTA1' |
See the full magic-numbers reference for every format.
Frequently asked questions
What is a .tta file?
A .tta file is True Audio, a free lossless audio codec built for fast, simple compression of CD rips. It compresses less than FLAC's best settings but encodes quickly, and files start with the tag TTA1.
How do I play a .tta file?
foobar2000 and VLC play TTA directly. For phones or hardware players, convert to FLAC first, which is lossless-to-lossless and costs no quality.
How do I split a single .tta album file into tracks?
Use the accompanying .cue sheet: foobar2000 or CUETools reads it and splits or converts the album into individual tracks.
Is TTA lossless?
Yes. Like FLAC and APE, decoding a .tta file reproduces the original audio exactly; the trade-off among them is speed versus compression ratio.
Related formats
Sources
Details on this page were checked against authoritative references: