Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum OK I'm Stupid. Just WHAT IS MP3?

I admit it. I have no idea of what MP3 means or is and what a MP3 Playback is.

I know I'll get an answer here.

Thanks,

Kathleen

mp3 is just a file format, Kathleen. It's a way of compressing a music file so that it doesn't take up as much space, which makes it easier to send through e-mail, plus you can fit more songs on an Ipod or other storage device, etc.

Because it's compressed, the quality you will get with it is not as good as the .wav format.

And that just about exhausts my knowledge of mp3s. I sure would be curious to find out just what the m and p and 3 stand for.

MP3 is music on your computer. When you download a piece of music that anyone shares, it's most likely an MP3. When you play a piece of music in your web browser, it's most likely an MP3. That's it.

MP3 is a codex that reduces some of the sound that is recorded to make the file smaller (removes sounds we cannot hear).

Because it is a different format then what you get of a regular CD, you need a player that can read the code and reproduce the sounds.

Some people claim they can tell the difference between regular CD and MP3, but I can't unless you pick a less then optimal reduction (you can get different qualities of recording by adjusting how much compression you want, the smaller, the less quality).

This ends my understanding.

Mike

MP3 stands for Moving Picture Experts Group-1 Audio Layer 3 (be thankful for abbreviations!)

Thank you all. I just bought a portable CD player (leaving for FL tomorrow and want to listen to Chopin while lying on a lounge chair on the beach), and the clerk said it was capable of playing MP3 music. I said: "Great." (Smiling and pretending I knew what in the heck he was talking about.) Now I do!

Thanks again,
Kathleen

Yes my friend has one of those and he tells me that it means you can make your own CDs consisting of several albums on one disc as the file compression saves so much space.

Yes, you can fit about 10 times as much on the CD if you use MP3. But for that you need to have a CD burner in your computer.

The reason sound quality is diminished is because
the person selects the wrong compression size
you should always choose 192 bitrate not 64 or 128
128 is acceptable..but go for 192..its CD quality
sure you get less songs on the CD..but sound quality isn't diminished with 192.. I can fit the equivalent of 8 CDs(15 tracks per CD) on 1 at 192 bitrate..thats the advantage of Mp3 format.. Bob Newbie

Yikes, now my eyes are starting to cross. I used to be a techie (believe it or not)...many years ago. However, things have gotten more complicated (at least to a brain with limited memory space). I'll try to figure it out.

Thanks once more,
Kathleen

You should see what possibilities are available with mp4's. You can combine streaming video's AND audio in one file!.

Super-Kewl! research it!