MP3 is the short form of MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 and is part of the Picture Expert Group (MPEG), which was originally developed as a standard to compress movie and video data. Digital music (e.g. from a CD) can be compressed into files that are comparatively small and thus can be easiely archived on a harddiskdrive or transferred via the Internet.
» Usages of the MP3 format
MP3 has many sides. With a player software the files can be played back on your computer directly, provided that you have a soundcard and loudspeakers. Exchanging music via the Internet became possible and very popular through the use of MP3. Today many unkown musicians and bands offer downloadable demotracks in MP3 format free of charge.
As MP3 got more and more popular it broke free. Portable hardware players were invented in 1998 to carry digital music into the real world. Today there are many classes of portable devices such as: flash memory-, CD- and harddiskdrive players and a good range of hifi racks and car audio devices able to play back MP3.
» Music compression results in loss of quality
Even with MP3 - compression without loss of quality is impossible. The "bitrate" (kbps) of a file shows the level of compression. The smaller the bitrate, the more dense the compression - the lower the quality of a track. Todays inoffical standard is 128 kbps
files, which is good for transferring tracks via the Internet, because they are small. One minute of a 128 kps MP3 track is only 1 MB in size. From 192 kbps the quality gets reasonably better but the files take up more space. 256 kbps is said to be Minidisc quality.
» Advantages of the MP3 format
It is foremost the quality/size relation and the independency of a platform that puts MP3 into the pole position it is in. Whilst the standard soundformat "wave" is still the top choice for master recordings it can in no way compete with MP3 in means of space usage (see illustration above).
» Quality/Size relation is everything
Good quality at small file sizes, the openess of the algorithm and the many sides MP3 has made it what it is: the No.1 above digital audio formats.
MP3s can be used on practically every operating system and in many portable and stationary hardware players.
MP3 is the short form of MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 and is part of the Picture Expert Group (MPEG), which was originally developed as a standard to compress movie and video data. Digital music (e.g. from a CD) can be compressed into files that are comparatively small and thus can be easiely archived on a harddiskdrive or transferred via the Internet.
