MP3

MP3 is a lossy audio compression format standardized as MPEG-1 Audio Layer III. It reduces file size by discarding audio information judged less audible.

Psychoacoustics: The study of how physical sound relates to human hearing and perception. MP3 estimates which sound components listeners are least likely to notice.
MPEG-1: A digital media standard covering compressed audio and video formats. MP3 is formally specified as one audio layer within this standard.
Moving Picture Experts Group: An international group that develops standards for compressed digital audio and video. The group standardized the MPEG audio framework that includes MP3.
Advanced Audio Coding: A lossy audio codec designed as a successor to MP3 in the MPEG standards family. AAC often achieves better quality than MP3 at comparable bit rates.
Digital audio player: A portable device that stores and plays digitally encoded audio files. MP3's small files made large portable music collections practical.
Modified Discrete Cosine Transform: A transform that represents signal frames as weighted sums of frequency components. MP3 uses this transform to encode audio in frequency bands.
MPEG-1 Audio Layer I: The simplest audio layer in MPEG-1, designed for lower compression complexity. It is a less complex sibling layer with less compression efficiency.
Fraunhofer Society: A German research organization focused on applied science and technology. Fraunhofer researchers helped develop MP3 encoding and drove its commercialization.
Opus (audio format): A lossy audio codec designed for interactive speech and music over the internet. Opus is a newer alternative with strong performance at low bit rates.
Napster: A peer-to-peer file-sharing service launched in 1999, best known for music sharing. MP3 files enabled rapid music exchange on the service.

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