MP3

MP3 is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format invented and standardised in 1991 by a team of engineers working in the framework of the ISO/IEC MPEG audio committee under the chairmanship of Professor Hans Musmann (University of Hannover - Germany). It was designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. In popular usage, MP3 also refers to files of sound or music recordings stored in the MP3 format on computers.

Encoding of MP3 audio

The MPEG-1 standard does not include a precise specification for an MP3 encoder.

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The decoding algorithm and file format, as a contrast, are well defined.

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Implementors of the standard were supposed to devise their own algorithms suitable for removing parts of the information in the raw audio (or rather its MDCT representation in the frequency domain).

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This is the domain of psychoacoustics, which aims at understanding how human acoustical perception works (both in our ears and in our brain).

Related Topics:
Psychoacoustics - Ear - Brain

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As a result, there are many different MP3 encoders available, each producing files of differing quality.

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Comparisons are widely available, so it is easy for a prospective user of an encoder to research the best choice.

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It must be kept in mind that an encoder that is proficient at encoding at higher bitrates (such as LAME, which is in widespread use for encoding at higher bitrates) is not necessarily as good at other, lower bitrates.

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