How do MP3s work?

MP3s have become extremely popular in the past decade due to the ease with which people can send MP3 files to each other over the Internet. The file size of an MP3 is much smaller than previous .wav or .aiff audio formats. Therefore they are ideal for backing up music on to a computer or external hard drive. They have, however, courted controversy due to the increase in illegal downloading and file-sharing over the Internet, with certain websites becoming involved in high profile court cases.

What Is an MP3?

• 1

  MP3 is a digital audio format that uses a form of compression called MPEG Audio Layer III (which MP3 is short for). This type of compression reduces the number of bytes the music contains, therefore taking up less space while retaining almost CD-quality audio.

• 2

  Compression essentially cuts out things that the human ear can’t hear. However, many argue that there is a substantial loss of quality with MP3s.

• 3

  MP3s can be played on computers, MP3 players of iPods and certain DVD or CD players that support MP3s.

How Does an MP3 Play?

• 1

  MP3 players contain very small hard drives that store the audio data.

• 2

  When the "Play" button is pressed, the player pulls the song from the memory and decompresses the MP3 encoding.

• 3

  The decompressed signal gets turned into sound waves via a digital-to-analog converter. The sound waves are then sent to the speakers, allowing us to hear the audio.