Why MP3?

To answer this question we must first ask the following:

WHAT IS MP3 AUDIO? MP3 is a highly compressed form of audio using MPEG-Layer 3 lossy type compression. Perceptual coding is the backbone of this type of compression. 

Digital audio has been around for more than a decade. It is only recently, however, that Digital audio became feasible on the web.  Most high quality audio CD’s average about 10 Meg of data for every minute of  audio which means your favorite 4 minute song takes up roughly 40 meg of disk space.
Files this large on a local web site would use most  of your space rather quickly, leaving you with little, if any, space for the  actual site plus extremely long download times and bandwidth issues for the user.

The problem is reducing the file size to something that will download in a fair amount of time and still sound good. This issue has always been a tradeoff: limit your recording to short sound bites or sacrifice the audio quality. In most cases, one or both of these options would be acceptable.

In the early to mid 90's the first perceptual coding algorithms started to appear. One of the first consumer hardware devices to take advantage of perceptual coding was the mini disc player / recorders. These products offered near CD quality with a medium smaller than Compact Disk’s, allowing instant access to all audio tracks with a sound quality far superior to  any cassette tape. While these are very good products, they have not managed to capture a large consumer market share. Then one day the algorithm was applied to  the Internet and MP3 was born.

How it works
The MP3 format based on perceptual coding algorithms, discards any sound frequencies outside  the range of human hearing, and finds sound frequencies  that are masked by louder sounds. For example,  a loud cymbal  crash that drowns out a tambourine in the background, causing the tambourine data to be discarded. The MP3 format then  applies Huffman coding which looks for segments  of data that repeat and replaces those segments with shorter pieces of code.  Depending on the options selected a file can be reduced to one tenth the original file size. Our 4 minute, 40 meg song file is now 4 meg. As with any technology, newer coding processes  and algorithms are always being developed allowing more compression while maintaining a good level of quality. These innovations allows the user to select the bit rate and sampling frequencies to customize file size to their  application needs. MP3 players are then able to restore the code during playback  with the options set in the encoding process. This produces audio qualities  ranging from AM radio to near CD.

What do you need to listen to MP3's?
Most computers have necessary components for MP3: a sound card and speakers, Internet connection and a MP3 decoder.

 Download the latest version of Media Player for your Windows operating system
from Microsoft at the  following URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/download/default.asp 

Or download one of these free decoders from  the following sites.

www.winamp.com   www.musicmatch.com     www.real.com

or   www.mp3prozone.com

Why MP3?
We choose MP3 for 3 main reasons. First, the format lends itself well to the Internet, it allows you to download a good sample audio file in a reasonable amount of time.  Second, the small files size conserves disk space keeping our costs down. Third, the MP3 format is very popular with internet users.

What is mp3PRO Technology?
To improve the sound quality of mp3 at lower bit rates, Coding Technologies has developed an enhancement technology that gives back the sound the high frequency components. The technology is called "Spectral Band Replication" (SBR). SBR is a very efficient method to generate the high frequency components of an audio signal. For more information about this technology please visit the following link: http://www.mp3prozone.com/basics.htm

All EarthStar Recordings
mp3 samples are encoded with 48 to 56 bit rates at 22Khz sampling rates.
All mp3PRO samples are encoded with 64 bit rates at 44Khz sampling rate.

 The sample quality would compare roughly to a very good FM Stereo broadcast.

Thank you for visiting EarthStar Recordings.
Enjoy the samples.

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