A wav file format used by Microsoft Windows for storing digitized audio. All information necessary to generate voice and music is stored in the file. (See also AIF , AU , Sound board , and MIDI ) The Web is Alive With the Sound of MP3," Newsweek, February 22, 1999, Page 16.
http:\\www.MP3.com (hours of free downloads, including the New York Times MP3s.)
http:www.audiogalaxy.com lots of samples and free downloads.)
Go to the Frequently Asked Questions at http://www.MP3.com . MP3 is a file format which stores audio files on a computer in such a way that the file size is relatively small, but the song sounds near perfect. You can identify MP3 files because they will end in MP3. Typically 1 MB is equal to one minute of music or several minutes for spoken work/audiobooks. This is about a 90% reduction in hard drive space and bandwidth vis-a-vis uncompressed high quality wav files, but the actual savings depends upon the recording quality of your wav files. If you think about a CD-ROM holding 650 Mb, this translates to over 11 hours of high quality audio in MP3 format. More importantly, MP3 audio does not require as much Internet bandwidth as previous audio alternatives