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m3po
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 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 has been developed in the late eighties by the Frauenhofer Insti-
tut für integrierte Schaltungen (Frauenhofer 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:
CD-Audio
MP3 128kBit/s
MP3 56kBit/s
11:1
1:1
25:1
