The history of the mp3 format

Sounds of a very different nature surround a person from the moment of his birth. Agree, if not for them, our life has lost a lot. Just imagine that the perky chirping of birds, the bewitching noise of the sea surf, the infectious laughter of a child, and indeed the human voice in general, disappeared overnight in the world. Mortal longing! That is why we cannot imagine our existence without sound in all its manifestations, in the musical - above all.

To be convinced of what has been said, it is enough to recall, for example, your daily stay in front of the screen of a turned on monitor. How often do you listen to music? Almost always, if not always. At the same time, few people think about what is behind music on the Web, on the hard drive of a PC or tablet, a pocket music player and other gadgets. But this is the ubiquitous MP3 format - the key file format for storing audio in today's digital world. He will become the hero of today's story. Next, we'll take a closer look at this audio format. Well, the administrator of the site https://myfreemp3.vip will tell us about this, with which you can download popular audio compositions in MP3 format for free.

MP3 - what is it and how does it work?

In the language of professionals, MP3 is a third level codec (full name from English - MPEG-1 Layer 3), created for encoding and storing sound with little loss for human perception. The compression algorithm used in MP3 format can significantly reduce the size of audio data (according to some estimates, up to 12 times) when compared to an Audio CD file. At the same time, the quality of sound reproduction in MP3 format is practically no different from the original. At least, the overwhelming majority of ordinary listeners are convinced of this.

How does sound quality remain unchanged with such multiple compression? It's pretty simple. In the process of digital processing (encoding into MP3 format) of the original audio file, certain parts of the audio stream are removed from it, which the human ear cannot distinguish. The information remaining as a result of this filtering is recorded and then reproduced in a truncated form. This is the essence of the MP3 format, in the language of amateurs.

Due to its compactness, the MP3 format has become an indispensable attribute of the digital age. Without it, the transmission and storage of most of the audio content on the Internet is unthinkable today. It is distinguished by all popular operating systems, and also support all portable and stationary audio devices without exception. In short, MP3 is the head of everything!

The Germans are "to blame" for everything

It is widely believed on the Internet that the history of the MP3 format began in the second half of the 80s of the last century. In fact, its origins should be sought a decade earlier.

In the early 1970s, at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany), a group of like-minded students gathered under the leadership of Professor Dieter Seitzer. The group's goal is to solve the problem of high-precision transmission of human speech through traditional telephone lines.

It is not known for certain what the researchers achieved on this path, because in the second half of the 70s their initial goal seemed no longer so urgent. The fact is that it was then that a real revolution took place in the telecommunications industry - the world learned about fiber-optic cable and digital communication network (ISDN). The exploitation of such innovations left the Seitzer group with its task out of work.

However, the guys did not despair, turning their attention to solving another problem related to efficient coding (compression) of music signals.

In 1979, the determination of scientists bore the first fruits. Seitzer and Co. have developed the world's first digital algorithm for compressing audio information. During the work on its creation, a student named Karlheinz Brandenburg, who later became the "father" of the MP3 format, was especially zealous. It was he who turned out to be the person who first drew the attention of his colleagues to the fact that optimal compression of audio content is impossible without taking into account the peculiarities of the device of the human hearing aid.

Subsequently, under the leadership of Seitzer, Brandenburg and the rest of the team made significant improvements in digital audio compression algorithms. At the same time, it should be noted that at that time the results of their research were more theoretical than applied. Their research did not go to the masses. Not yet.