Mp3 faq - How does MP3 work

How does MP3 work?

It's quite simple (in concept, that is). What MP3 codec does, is that it gets rid of parts of audio that you and I cannot hear. Our human ears are quite limited in that after hearing something loud, you can't hear quiet sound for short period of time. MP3 codec calculates and deletes that part. This is how MP3 achieves its great compression ratio without the apparent quality loss.

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