Are mp3s audio codecs?
a “codec” is concatenation of “coder / decoder”. Basically, they are translators from one uncompressed form of data to compressed form of data, or the other way around. When you go uncompressed to compressed, it’s encoding, and when you go the other way, it’s decoding. In general, a “codec” on a personal computer is only used for decoding. You have compressed data, like MP3. You run it through a codec for decoding, and out comes uncompressed audio, which is sent to sound card and out comes sound. An audio codec, of course, is only for audio. And different audio format needs different codecs. MP3 (technically, MPEG Layer 3) is one such format, but there are many others. OGG, AAC, FLAC, and so on, and you’ll need a codec for each. So just to clarify, MP3 the format is not the same as the MP3 codec, but related. (Different people can write different codecs that do very similar things, just as Ford and Chrysler and Chevy all make cars). There are codec packs and multi-format codecs out the
