2006-06-16 21:13:18 · 5 answers · asked by Pokey 2 in Entertainment & Music ➔ Music
What is MP3 and what does it stand for?
MP3 is a form of compression. In short is stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer III, which was developed by the Moving Picture Experts’ Group (MPEG) and has been further developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for encoding purposes, although at present some MP3 software developers now have to apply to Fraunhofer to licence any further encoding development for marketing purposes.
How does MP3 work?
MP3 compression is based on a psycho-acoustic model which recognizes that the human ear cannot hear all the audio frequencies of a recording. The human hearing range is between 20Hz to 20Khz and it is most sensitive between 2 to 4 KHz.
MP3 music files are CD quality compressed recordings that occupy approximately one tenth to one twelfth less file space than the equivalent CD format WAV/AIFF file, which is achieved by filtering out all noise that is not detectable to the human ear.
When sound is compressed into an MP3 file, an attempt is made to get rid of the frequencies that can't be heard. As such, this is known as 'destructive' compression. After a file is compressed, the data that is eliminated in the creation of the MP3 cannot be replaced.
When encoding a file into MP3 format, a variety of compression levels can be set. For instance, an MP3 created with 128 Kbit compression will be of a greater quality and larger file size than that of a 56 Kbit compression, thus the more the compression level decreases, the lesser the sound quality.
This is one of the reasons that MP3 format music files have become so popular with internet dedicated music lovers as it is the ideal medium for accessing legal music files over the internet without the extensive download times involved with WAV/AIFF files.
Now this is great for the discerning music lover as music has become more freely available over the internet – or is it free?
Well, there are plenty of sites on the internet offering free legal downloads, but, there are also sites offering illegal downloads of established artists’, thus denying selfsame artists’ of their rightful royalties.
Some people also took the opportunity to distribute music files between themselves illegally, although it is regarded as perfectly legal to rip MP3 tracks from CD only as long as they are for your own personal use only.
The music industry soon took a dim view of this and were reluctant to endorse MP3 because of the threat of wholesale piracy, but, action is being taken and illegal sites are being shut down. This action together with the evolvement of recognized MP3 music sites such as mp3.com and mp3now.com has helped to make the MP3 format more credible with the music industry boffins.
MP3 is now the ideal medium for the up-and-coming music bands to display their talents and get their music noticed by placing singles and albums on the internet for free or a small fee for immediate download.
2006-06-16 21:18:00 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
MP3 is a compression format. It provides a representation of pulse-code modulation-encoded (PCM) audio data in a much smaller size by discarding portions that are considered less important to human hearing (similar to JPEG, a lossy compression for images).
A number of techniques are employed in MP3 to determine which portions of the audio can be discarded, including psychoacoustics. MP3 audio can be compressed with different bit rates, providing a range of tradeoffs between data size and sound quality.
The MP3 format uses a hybrid transformation to transform a time domain signal into a frequency domain signal:
* 32-band polyphase quadrature filter
* 36 or 12 tap MDCT; size can be selected independent for sub-band 0...1 and 2...31
* Aliasing reduction postprocessing
In terms of the MPEG specifications, AAC (Advanced audio coding) from MPEG-4 is to be the successor of the MP3 format, although there has been a significant movement to create and popularize other audio formats. Nevertheless, any succession is not likely to happen for a significant amount of time due to MP3's overwhelming popularity. MP3 enjoys extremely wide popularity and support, not just by end-users and software but by hardware such as portable media players (referred to as MP3 players) DVD and CD players.
2006-06-16 21:16:56 · answer #2 · answered by Lupin IV 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format, designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. It was invented by a team of European engineers who worked in the framework of the EUREKA 147 DAB digital radio research programme and finally standardized by ISO/IEC in 1991 .
Opinion: What I like best on this MP3 file because it's everybody's favorite format. When I searched any songs in LimeWire, every songs displayed are MP3. Boom! I don't like ACC and WAV, they sound crap.
2006-06-16 21:16:18 · answer #3 · answered by Malcolm uses Xbox 360 Avatar 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
MP3 is the best file format used to store digital music.
2006-06-16 21:16:17 · answer #4 · answered by michien9992 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In a way that you were to understand, it is a portable system capable of holding a large capacity of information. It is mostly used for music and computer data.
2006-06-16 21:19:26 · answer #5 · answered by Sebastianave 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋