WHATS SPECIAL ABOUT MPEG-3 COMPRESSION?
According to what I have been led to believe, MPEG compression is similar to what I described above. The big difference between MPEG-3 on the one hand, and MPEG-2 and ATRAC compression on the other is that Layer-3 was designed from the ground up as a low bit rate codec. Earlier MPEG Layers were designed to compress as much as possible without compromising quality too much, Layer 3 was from the ground up designed as a low bandwidth transmission codec to stream video over the web and audio over phone lines and other low bandwidth systems. So, you get your compression no matter what, at a heady 12:1 ratio. HOW DOES MPEG-3 SOUND? Now here is the kicker, not too bad. Not great, under most circumstances, and positively awful if not done right. Not surprisingly, a clean original is absolutely necessary, your original file should be recorded very well, and have as little noise and hiss as possible. If you are starting with a noisy 8 bit file recorded with a cheap mic (or even a really good mic
