M3PO go
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Useful information on MP3.
Her we have compiled some general information on MP3, its origin and software to convert
your own music and, most important, what is allowed and what is not?
What is MP3?
MP3 is an abbreviation for MPEG Layer 3, which in turn contains another abbreviation: MPEG
= Motion Picture Experts Group, which is governed by a group of competent experts from the
film production industry. MPEG is basically a storage format for audio- and video data, which
has been in constant development for years. The basics for today's popular third layer of the
MPEG2.5 audio specification were developed in the late eighties by the Fraunhofer Institute
for Integrated Circuits (Fraunhofer IIS - Germany).
Its main advantage is the small size of its audio files, as described in the following example: If
you record a standard audio CD on your home PC, then this will use about 650 Megabyte (MB)
of hard disk space. Converting this into MP3 files, you are presented with only 1/11 of its origi-
nal size, roughly 60MB. If the files contain nothing but speech (i.e. language courses), the
size of the file can be reduced to 1/25 of its original size, without losing too much of its sound
quality. This is quite useful, as you can see:
How come?
“Layer 3” is a clever combination of data compression and data reduction. This means that
digital data is being compressed (The PC calls this 'packing', for example when converting to
the .ZIP format). In the process, the data will be scanned for repeat data. To save space, this
data will only be saved once and tagged with information, where it needs to re-appear. This
can account for massive reduction in storage space and means that the data will be identical
to the original, once 'unpacked' (i.e. decompressed).
In order to achieve a decrease of 1:11 or more, another process will be required – data reduc-
tion. You may have guessed by its name, that some data will actually be cancelled in this pro-
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