MP3 Advice: What Are MP3s?

    MP3 Advice: What Are MP3's
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What Are MP3s?

MP3 stands for MPEG layer 3, which is an audio compression format. MP3 uses a perceptual audio coding and psycho acoustic compression to remove all superfluous portions of the sound, creating an audio file that has been reduced in size by a factor of 12.

What does this mean in normal human terms? MP3s can take an audio signal, most often in the form of CD audio or WAV format, and shrink it down to a small, easily distributed or stored file. It is able to do this by removing portions of the audio signal that the human ear cannot hear and then highly compressing the file.

It is because if the size of this file that controversy surrounds the MP3. Because a high quality digital audio file can easily be distributed over the Internet, or via CD burners, the record companies fear the artist could easily distribute their music to their fans without the benefit of massive marketing and distribution arm of the Industry. Therefore, costs to the consumer would decrease and profits to the artist would increase, obviously a threat to the traditional record industry.



 
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