What is an Mp3

[debx]

What exactly is an Mp3? How many MB in a GB? If I save audio tracks using RealPlayer are these Mp3s? How many of these would fit on a 20GB Mp3 Player if they average 12MBs?

[honkytonkman]

I don't know much about Mp3s but 1 Gigabyte (Gb) is 1000 megabytes (Mb).

[powerless]

We as Humans can only hear so much of the sound spectrum. There is no point in sound that we as humans cannot hear being in a sound file (song is this case). An MP3 has all of the sound that we as Humans can hear in it. That is why the file size is small. All of that "other" sound that we cannot hear only increases the file size and as we cannot hear it, there is no point in it being there. So an MP3 is a small file with all of the sound that we can hear. How big an MP3 file is depends upon the encoding. For example an encoded file at 128kbps would sound far superior to a file that is encoded at 64kbps. However at 128kbps, a file would [say] have a file size of 4MB but a file that is encoded at 64kbps would be [say] 2MB (a rough example, lenght of a song also comes into play). So you can have either a small file but with reduced sound quality or a large file but with increased sound quality. 128kbps is generally the norm for MP3s...They give good files sizes, with sound quality to match. When you save audio tracks using Realplayer they are saved, as *.wav, *.mp3 or Reals own media type. To make RP save to *.mp3 when you insert your CD, click "Save Tracks" and then click "Change Settings..." and you can select mp3 from there. But the quality is limited to 96kbps... You have to buy the plugin in for better quality. However there are alternatives that can do the samething for free... http://www.mthreedev.com/ http://www.dbpoweramp.c
om/dmc.htm Search on www.google.com for many others... As to how many can fit on 20GB = Thousands!

[carlos]

If your average mp3 is 12Mb then you can fit 1666 onto a 20Gb player(20000/12). If the mp3's are encoded at 128 kilobits per second then you'll be able to fit about 347 hours of music onto the player.

[sft42]

Sorry Honkytonk but your wrong, a gigabyte is 1024mb....computing units tend to be based in multiples of eight not ten....What ever you do give this player a try http://www.musicmatch.com as they have an excellent free player which lets you rip tracks froma cd at any bit rate...The average rate most people work to is roughly 200 mp3 tracks on a cd which is 800mb......An average four minute song sampled at 128k will work out at around 4mb so you would be able to fit 5140 tracks on to your 20gb hard drive.

[gilf]

This is just personal opinion but I only ever use 64kbps and to be honest I couldnt really tell the difference between the 2 unless you played one after the other. Its alot to do with the machine and mainly the headphones. So if you have a �30 pair of Bose headphones then you would notice the difference but if you had a �1.97 pair of headphones such as I have here at work you wouldnt really be able to tell. And yes thats �1.97 possibly the most comfortable in ear headphones I have ever used and the quality its pretty good.

[powerless]

1000MB and 1024MB there are two standards. gilf good quality hardware is needed to be able to tell the difference and a good set of ears to match.