An Mp3 Primer; What Is Mp3; Mp3 Conversion Process; Extracting From Audio Cd - Creative NOMAD JUKEBOX Getting Started Manual

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An MP3 Primer

What is MP3?

MP3 is the acronym for Moving Picture
Experts Group (MPEG) Layer 3, a type of
audio data compression technology that can
reduce digital sound files by as much as
one-twelfth of their original size, with
virtually no loss in quality. It is an efficient
way to store high-quality music or other audio
content on your computer.
These MP3 files usually have the extension
.MP3, and can be downloaded from the
Internet, or be legally produced for personal
use from original audio CDs.
It is illegal to encode MP3 files for
trade or sale unless you have the
expressed and explicit permission of
the copyright holder(s).
MP3 Conversion
Process

Extracting from Audio CD

You must have a CD-ROM drive that
can extract audio data from an audio
CD.
Audio CD extraction is the first phase in the
MP3 conversion process. You need a program
that can direct the CD-ROM drive to extract
this audio data. Known as a "ripper", the
program reads the data from the audio CD and
sometimes stores it in a file on your hard disk.
The duration of the audio CD extraction phase
depends on many factors. The speed of a
CD-ROM drive is one of the most important
elements in overall extraction speed. The
speed ratings commonly seen on CD-ROM
drives—like 40X, and so on—refer to the rate
at which data CDs or CD-ROMs are read.
Your CD-ROM drive may be fast at reading
non-audio data, but slow at reading audio CD
data.
Other factors affecting extraction are defects
or scratches on an audio CD which result in
lost data. This is not noticeable when the audio
CD is playing in a CD-ROM drive. When the
audio data is put through the MP3 encoding
phase, however, the distortion is highly
noticeable. To avoid this distortion, the audio
CD extraction program may read the data two
or three times to make sure it reads the data
correctly. This error-checking feature is an
option in most audio CD data extraction
software. Be sure error-checking is enabled in
your audio CD extraction software.

Encoding to MP3

MP3 encoding is the second phase in the MP3
conversion process. The data extracted from
an audio CD is one of the many types of data
an MP3 encoder may process. Encoders read
.WAV data and compress this data into an MP3
file.
MP3 encoding is quality lossy compression,
with some data being lost during compression.
Although the original data is greatly
compressed, the resulting data does not suffer
much loss in audio quality. The amount of
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