MP3 is a widely-used digital music file format, revolutionizing how we access music. These files can be stored on a compact disk or downloaded from the Internet and played back in any digital player - from computers and mobile phones to online streaming services.
The MP3 format utilizes a lossy compression algorithm that decreases information stored within audio files without diminishing quality, making it suitable for online distribution of music, podcasts and spoken content such as interviews. MP3 can also be found used professionally digital audio production applications.
The MP3 file extension was pioneered by a team at Germany's Fraunhofer Society led by Karlheinz Brandenburg, van de Kerkhof and Stoll - with assistance from American computer scientist James D. Johnston's contributions. As a result, MP3 is an incredibly popular and successful high-quality digital audio format which typically is 10 times smaller than its WAV or AIF counterparts.
At its introduction, MP3 was an innovative coding system. Based on observations that musical tones and other sounds can often be represented using limited bits, and that when distributed more sparsely throughout a song file they produce smaller files - an idea known as Periodic Fragment Coding (PFC), which has since become the basis for many modern encoding technologies.
Early MP3 encoders used a process known as Constant Bit Rate (CBR) encoding to apply an identical bit rate across every frame in an MP3 file, known as Constant Bit Rate encoding. Later versions of encoder software could optimize file size by targeting a specific average bit rate and choosing an encoding rate based on audio complexity within each frame; this was known as Variable Bit Rate (VBR) encoding, providing better quality at reduced file sizes than CBR.
Another key development in MP3 coding is its capability of embedding data within each frame that can be accessed by other encoders - this feature, known as ancillary data, provides another means of creating tailored encoding algorithms. For instance, encoder mp3PRO used ancillary data to include extra information that would enhance sound quality when decoded with other MP3 encoders.
Further enhancements of MP3 coding specifications resulted in ISO/IEC 13818-3 (MPEG-2 Audio or MPEG-2 Part 3), published in 1995. This standard defined additional frames with different interpretations of frame data structures and size layouts and extended sample rates up to two channels.
MPEG-2.5 added new encoding options designed to optimize human speech and other low-bit-rate applications while still offering high-quality audio. It defines sampling rates exactly half those available with MPEG-2 but only requires 1/4th the bandwidth necessary for frequency reproduction of its predecessor MPEG-1.
