A Very Brief Introduction to MP3 Recordings
By
Henry Root
May 29, 2006

What is MP3?
Very briefly, MP3 is a refined phychoacoustic data reduction scheme that discards the majority of the pure audio data where human hearing is the lease sensitive and records the remainder which pretty accurately represented the original music or speech. The loss is hardly discernable to most people.

Why? What’s the need?
Non-reduced digital audio recording requires lots of space on a storage  or transmission medium. This is costly in terms of dollars for storage and the necessary bandwidth. Music and speech cannot be transmitted via the  Internet unless the number of bits is greatly reduced.

The reduction ratios can vary between 6:1 and 22:1. The higher the ratio, the greater the reduction and the lesser the sonic quality.

But, with the great reduction in the number of bits required to transmit or store recorded sound, we can listen to radio stations, music and teaching via the Internet. We can also record far more than the standard 80 minutes on a regular CD. Would you believe up to 14 hours on a regular CD? It’s true.

We can record hours of music or speech on a standard 770 MB CD using MP3 data reduction. This greatly reduces the production and distribution costs.

What’s the Trick?
The trick is that very carefully chosen data the thrown away. Dissertations have been written on the subjective effects of this data reduction and how to improve the process. Some Internet searching will provide additional information if you desire it. Just believe that it works. With gentle reduction, only a trained ear can tell the difference.

Can I listen to an MP3 CD on any CD player?
In a word, No! Most of the hundreds of millions of CD players in the world cannot play MP3 CDs. But, many other millions will. There are personal MP3 CD players; there are automotive in-dash CD players. Almost all DVD players and computers will play MP3 CDs. The situations gets better by the month.

What do I gain by using MP3?
You gain the ability of having a lot more learning at a lot lower cost! Imagine 10-12 or 14 hours of spoken word audio on one CD!

 Transportation costs are skyrocketing along with fuel costs. The production are transportation costs of 10 to 14 CDs can be reduced to one. But, that’s just the financial side. Look beyond the fact that more teaching can be passed to more people at a far lower cost. More people can be fed  on God’s word, and the costs of new MP3 CD players are easily amortized by the far lower teaching material production costs....