Introducing the MP3 File Format

MP3 (or as it is more corrrectly known - MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) is an audio encoding format, invented by a team of European engineers at Philips, CCETT (Centre commun d'études de télévision et télécommunications), IRT and Fraunhofer Society.

The format uses a lossy compression algorithm that is designed to reduce the amount of data needed to represent the audio recording, whilst still sounding like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. To achieve this, the compression removes certain parts of sound that are outside the hearing range of most people.

In this section, you can learn more about the MP3 file format, as well as information on the alternatives that may be used for this format.