MP3s
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MP3 players started unlike the other music formats, such as vinyl records, cassettes, or CDs, which started with industries that produced them. The popularity of the MP3 started on the internet, and changed, some argue for good or bad, the way people listen, experience, and share music. MP3 are different, because they are not physically tangible like other mediums. We cannot personally carry around MP3, but instead a device that holds them such as personal computers or MP3 players. Some love the versatility MP3 players offer the people who listen to them, and others argue that MP3 audio files do have the same sound quality compared to records or even CDs. Nevertheless, for an item that weighs about six ounces, it changed the world.
The basics of how MP3 files work connects with the previous information from CD digital music files. To recap briefly, when a CD is created "is sampled 44, 100 times per second...samples are 2 bytes (16 bits) long" ("MP3 Files" 2). The average song on a CD uses about 32 million megabytes of space. According to Marshal Brain, founder of How Stuff Works, Inc., "Even with high-speech cable or DSL modem, it can take several minutes to download just one song. Over a 56K dial-up modem, it would take close to two hours" ("MP3 Files" 2). Therefore, what MP3 audio files attempt to do is compress a "CD-quality song by a factor of 10 to 14 without noticeably affecting CD-quality sound" ("MP3 Files" 2). The reason for compressing the audio file is to let users download songs more quickly onto their computers. In other words, a 32-megabyte song is turned into about 3 MB ("MP3 Files" 2). However, not all MP3 files are created equally and neither is their quality. MP3 compression formats that do not sound like original recording are called a lossy format, which is done to decrease the size of the file ("MP3 Files" 3). MP3 encoders have to cut audio information for lossy formats, but lossless compression formats do not sacrifice any audio information. The most popular lossless format is FLAC, free lossless audio codec which has its own player downloadable online. Therefore, the "lower the bit rate, the more information the encoder will discard when compressing the file. Bit rates range from 96 to 320 kilobytes per seconds (Kbps). Using a bit rate of 128 Kbps...results in sound quality" similar to radio stations ("MP3 Files" 3). MP3 files are more diverse and complex than other mediums, and it depends on the bit rate whether the quality stands up to those older formats. Regardless, they have taken over the music distribution industries. |