What is MP3?

There is a lot more specific information on MP3s in our faq section, so please feel free to browse through there if you really are non-plussed by this brief note.

MP3 is the most widely know music compression software CODEC. CODEC stands for Code / Decode and basically means the way in which the music file is squashed or compressed. The trick is to get the maximum compression (smallest file size) but to retain the best audio quality. There are several other music compression software CODEC - some quite superior to MP3. The MP3 technique is several years old now - positively ancient in software terms.

MP3 has almost come to mean 'compressed music file' in the same way that 'Kleenex' is American for tissue or 'Hoover' is used through out Britain and Ireland to mean vacuum cleaner. MP3 is not only not the only format available for music compression. It is not the most effective (in terms of file size / audio quality ratio), either. A lot of so called 'MP3 Players' can play a lot more than just MP3s.

MP3 is quite old as a method of compressing music files. It was first defined in 1991 and 'standardised' in 1992 by the IOS and IEC. The MP3 method of compressing audio files has been superceded by more recent Compression developments such as WMA and AAC.

We have occasionally used the term MP3 Player where the term Jukebox is more appropriate. In a few years time we will probably have dropped the term MP3 from the hardware descriptions at least. At the moment it is still a recognised generic term used to mean 'compressed digital music file'.

Currently all the Jukboxes on this site play MP3s.