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MP3 is a digital compression
format used to make audio files small enough to
transfer efficiently over the Internet. CD-quality
audio files take up a whopping 10 megabytes (MB)
of hard disk space per stereo minute, whereas MP3
files average 1 MB per stereo minute. When a digital
audio file is compressed as an MP3, bits of data
are stripped away to optimize file size. This type
of compression is considered "lossy" because
it prioritizes and removes harmonic data.
MP3 stands for Moving Picture
Expert Group 1 layer 3. The MPEG format was created
in 1992 in conjunction with the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) and IEC as a multimedia
format to compress audio and video. In 1994 the
standard for MPEG 1 layer 2 was developed. MPEG
layer 2 was created primarily for video although
it accommodated both older and new audio technology.
The MPEG layer 2 standard supported the MPEG-1 audio
format as well as Dolby 5.1 and the ability to encode
files with sampling rates up to 24kHz. MPEG 1 layer
3, the most recent standard, allows for greater
data compression than the previous formats. Use
of MP3 compression results in near CD-quality audio
at a fraction of the uncompressed file size, while
maintaining the sample rate.
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