MP3 Encoding Technology
The MP3 is a complete godsend for anyone who enjoys and
appreciates good music. Not only does it afford users the
convenience of purchasing music online and ripping from
purchased CDs, it also provides the utmost ease in portability.
There are more MP3 players on the market than I can name. These
players allow you to download hundreds and in some cases
thousands of MP3's to take along with you anywhere. I create MP3
CD's containing up to 120 of my favorite songs for my listening
pleasure in my car. But how can so many audio files get stored
on my 800MB (Megabyte) CD?
MP3 Encoders and MP3 converters are the software that creates
MP3s by using an MP3 compression and decompression algorithm.
For example, an average 3 minute WAV file can be as large as
15MB. Using MP3 encoders and MP3 converters, a large WAV file
can be cut down to a much smaller and more portable MP3 file of
about 3MB.
MP3 stands for MPEG Audio Layer 3. At layer 3, psychoacoustics
principles are used to find and remove all unnecessary sound
data, leaving behind only the crucial audio data. By unnecessary
sound data I mean all of the stuff that we humans don't hear
anyway. Most people can't hear sounds above 16 kHz so why would
you want it hogging your disk or hard drive space? Non-music
audio such as speeches, sermons, audio books and comedy albums,
can be reduced even less based on this.
Compression occurs after the essential data has been separated
from the redundant data. At this stage, the same amount of data
can be stored using fewer bits and less space. The bit rate is
the ratio of the number of bits transferred between two devices
per second. The higher the bit rate, the higher the sound
quality. The lower the bit rate ratio, the lower the sound
quality. 192 Kb/s is the most popular bit rate used in
peer-to-peer networks. For the most part, MP3 converters and
encoders today use variable bit rates. This allows for much
better quality audio because the bit rate conforms to the
dynamics of the audio frames being stored which in turn keeps
more of the important music data.
There are dozens of MP3 compressor and encoder software programs
available online and at stores. Some of the main encoding
engines are: LAME, Blade Enc, Fraunhofer Encoders and Xing.
Deciding which MP3 encoding engine technology is right for you
depends on your individual needs and preferences. Blaze Media
Pro is an excellent option if you're looking for a powerful, yet
easy to use, all-in-one multimedia solution.