MP3s Explained
A beginners guide to the mysteries of the MP3 file
If you are planning to buy an MP3 player, but every time you look into it you feel like you're entering into a whole new culture with terms like: rip, burn, hack, and sync. Are MP3 players really so complicated you need a special hipsters dictionary to decrypt all the buzzwords? All you really want to do is playback music on the go, convert a few of your CDs to MP3 format and upload them to your new MP3 player. We can help make it easy.
An MP3 is a format of software compression specifically designed for audio. Using the MP3 format, you can turn sound files into smaller files that can be easily transported through the internet or stored in large quantities on limited storage space. Usually MP3s are songs, but they don't have to be. An individual MP3 file can be any audio recording digitized for playback on a computer or digital audio player (MP3 player). Essentially, an MP3 file can be music, an audio book, or an interview with a celebrity you downloaded as a Podcast.
Tech Tip: The MP3 file is actually from a family of media compression called Mpeg. MP3 is actually Mpeg-1 Audio Layer - 3.
To RIP an MP3 is any method that takes a CD and creates a collection of MP3s out of it. This is more properly called encoding, but the kids prefer the term rip. A CD that has been encoded into MP3 is considered to be ripped or ripped to MP3. It is not illegal to rip a CD into MP3 format for personal use. It is, however, a legal grey area to take the ripped music files you have made on your home computer and distribute them over the internet. In the U.S, this practice is certainly illegal and amounts to copyright infringement; however, for personal use, you can freely convert all the music you own into MP3 format and carry it with you on a portable MP3 player or any digital audio player, such as a music cell phone or even a Sony PSP.
Most MP3 players come with MP3 ripping software, such as Apple's iTunes, which comes with an iPod. Alternatively, you can download MP3 ripping software such as Winamp. Winamp, like most third party software, will require you to pay for a version of the software that allows you to encode CDs to MP3 format.
To BURN an MP3 is to write it to a CDR (writable CD) or DVDR (writable DVD) using a disk writer or CD/DVD burner commonly found on computers. A CDR burned with your MP3 collection will hold from five to ten conventional music CDs. MP3 playback devices are more common now so many conventional CD players will also playback MP3s that were burned onto a CDR.
You can RIP and BURN music without breaking a nail or creating a fire hazard; it's not nearly as violent as it sounds.
MP3 is a form of lossy compression, which means that the compression algorithm discards sounds that are either redundant or sufficiently covered up by other sounds so as not likely to be noticed. The more compression that is applied the smaller the file will get, which will make the audio quality from the file become lower too. True fans of high fidelity audio either won't use Mp3 at all or will prefer them in their least compressed (IE largest) form possible: 320 kbps. KBPS is a measure of compression: kilobits per second. The number of kbps of an MP3 is called its bitrate. Conventional wisdom states that 320 kbps MP3s are CD quality. 128kbps is an accepted standard bitrate used to transfer files over the internet. A bitrate of 96 is considered close to FM radio and is commonly used by internet or web radio stations.
Tech Tip: Anyone who is partially competent with an audio playback system (a step up from the iPod's earbuds) will be able to hear the difference between a 128 bit MP3 and a 320 bit MP3. The drop off in quality when you step down to 128 bit is quite apparent. Don't stand for 128 bit MP3s! Always rip MP3 at a higher bitrate, and buy and demand MP3s with as high a bitrate as possible.
Now that you have a good understanding of exactly what a single MP3 is, you'll now need to know what to do with a huge collection of MP3s. Your whole collection of MP3s is called your library, and a big library is difficult to manage. Since you can't exactly buy CD towers to store music files in your living room, you'll need MP3 library management software to tame your collection. Playlists are a convenient way to playback only a specific assortment of MP3s at a time. Learn how to manage an MP3 music library and create and edit your own playlists.