Instead, MP3 files use perceptual coding. That means that an MP3 file does not contain 100% of the original audio information. This then enables you to get hundreds of songs on to a CD and it also has opened up a new market over the internet - the download market as download times have been significantly reduced.

MP3 gets rid of a lot of the information recorded in a song that our ears are not able to hear and then uses complex algorithms to reduce the file size. MP3 is a digital music format which allows CD tracks to be reduced to around a tenth of their normal size without a significant loss of quality. This is known as auditory masking, this allows the discarding of data with minimal loss of quality.Ī combination of Fraunhofer IIS, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Dolby and Sony Corporation The human hearing system cannot hear quiet sounds in the presence of loud sounds of a similar frequency for example, a voice conversation cannot be heard while an aeroplane flies low overhead. The current variant is specified in ISO/IEC standard 14496-3. It is also part of the MPEG-4 standard, it is most widely used to create small digital audio files. It too compresses digital audio files but to a bigger degree. Apple are the biggest users of this format and if you have an iPod or iPhone then you will have come across this format as it is iTunes default audio format.ĪAC is similar in concept to MP3 but goes further.

It is at least one tenth the size of CD digital data. AAC is about half the size of MP3 but with better quality. It essentially cuts out, or compresses, information that the human ear cannot pick up thereby making digital files smaller and more easily managed and therefore quicker to download.

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