What is MP3?
MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3) is a standard for compressing a sound sequence into a very small file (about one-twelfth the size of the original file) while preserving the original level of sound quality when it is played. Winamp (PC), MacAmp (Mac), and mpg123 (UNIX) are popular MP3 players, but there are many others.
MP3 is a highly compressed computer file format used for the storage and transmission of sound and music. MP3 is also called MPG3, MPG-3, MPG Level 3, MPG Level III, MPEG 3, etc. I have also seen mention of MPEG1 Level 3 which appears to be the same as MP3 from its description. MP3 uses the same type of highly efficient and extremely clever fractal-based algorithms for sound compression as JPG does for photographs. Just as the JPG algorithms were designed specifically to compress photographs efficiently, so the MP3 algorithms were designed specifically to compress sound and music efficiently. Like JPG, MP3 is a slightly lossy format, meaning that the final sound is not quite identical to the source. However, the degradation occurs in a very controllable manner and so can easily be kept to a level below that discernible to the listener. As with JPG, there is no loss when copying or transmitting MP3 files, only when creating or editing them.
MP3 is a file format which is used to play music on your computer. MP3 is a relatively new format which was introduced a few years ago and make quite a breakthrough in digital music. The major thing it introduced is a very high quality sound file which takes up low storage space. The quality of the music is CD-quality (44khz, Joint stereo). The previous format (WAV) also gave a supoerb quality sound, but it’s major flaw was storage space (it took around 10Mb for every minute of music, while MP3 files take up to 1/10).
