For many, dematerialized music rhymes with illegally downloaded MP3.
If this comment is often true, since illegal music sharing platforms have made mp3 the primary format for music playback, you obviously need not limit yourself to the single mp3 format.
MP3: birth of a format
The MP3 was democratized on the music exchange platforms of the time like Napster, Kazaa, Emule … in the late 90’s and for good reason they allowed you to download an entire album in a few minutes by compressing the music and thus shrinking the files.
Therefore, it is the need to exchange files and shorten the download time (remember we were paying the internet at that time according to your connection time …) making the development of mp3 essential and for many synonymous with dematerialized music.
The MP3 principle is therefore simple and attractive on paper: enable file sharing by drastically reducing the weight of files (more than 90%), and only by keeping what the human ear can do. listen, that is, the frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz.
MP3: bad reputation
Unfortunately, the main consequence of this thin race is that the quality deteriorates: every mp3 has a compression level. The higher it is, the more the musical signal is cut off: this is called destructive compression: we eliminate all information that is considered useless and impossible to return.
Therefore, during this period there was the spread of the famous 128 kbps MP3: this figure indicates the amount of information in the file and therefore its quality, the higher and better the sound will be. Therefore, some sort of standard has gradually been established around this bit rate of 128 kbps (kilobits per second), since it is inseparable as the quality of the CD at 1411 kbps.
mp3 – Napster
The Napster interface, one of the first illegal music sharing programs. Note the music ratio at 128 kbps (see less …)
It is clear that we do not reduce the amount of musical information by 90% with impunity and the results are often poor, the quality of the mp3 with 128 kbps is much lower and perfectly noticeable from the original CD. Then the new bit rates of 160 kbps, 192 kbps, 256 kbps and 320 kbps came to maximum, then “VBR” formats for “Variable Bit Rate” and against CBR (constant bit rate)) used earlier: we decreased the bit rate at rest and increased if necessary.
Therefore, we can see that it is difficult to pronounce the MP3 format in general: the results will be very different between a 128 kbps CBR mp3 and a 320 kbps VBR and, to a large extent, for the latter, for the price of one double weight.
Alternatives to MP3
MP3 is not the only dematerialized music format, it is first necessary to divide the compression formats into two categories:
Destructive Compression Formats: We remove content to reduce its size
MP3: the readable standard for 100% of music devices released in 20 years
AAC: Used by Apple in the iTunes music store (Apple Audio Codec), almost as universal as MP3
Ogg Vorbis: a free, efficient yet non-standard format
WMA: Microsoft format, not very standard either, except on Windows PC (can Microsoft have anything to do with it?)
Non-destructive compression formats: we compress the data for storage and decompress it when reading, therefore the sound reproduction is lossless, but it generates files 3 times larger:
FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec, it is somewhat the equivalent of Ogg in that it is royalty free and has established itself as the current standard for non-destructive formats (lossless in English)
ALAC: The Apple version of FLAC, which has also been in free form for some time, has the advantage of being compatible with the brand’s products and computers and offers the same benefits as FLAC.
