.MP3 - File Extension for Audio/Music Files

Q

File extension MP3 is used for audio/music files encoded in MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) format. A MP3 sample file is provided. Free MP3 players and editors are listed.

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A

File Extension: .MP3

MIME Type: audio/mpeg

File Content: Audio data.

What is MP3? MP3 is a short name for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, which is a very popular encoding format for audio recording. MP3 was invented by a team of European engineers at Philips, CCETT, IRT and Fraunhofer Society in 1991.

MP3 is the file extension for files storing audio recordings encoded in MP3 format.

MP3 format supports several bit rates: 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256 and 320 kbit/s. But 128 kbit/s is most commonly used since it typically offers very good audio quality in a relatively small space. By contrast, uncompressed audio as stored on an audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD-DA) has a bit rate of 1,411.2 kbit/s (16 bits/sample * 44100 samples/second * 2 channels / 1000 bits/kilobit).

Here are the first 64 bytes of a sample MP3 file dumped in HEX values:

49 44 33 03 00 00 00 00 1f 76 50 52 49 56 00 00 ID3......vPRIV..
00 0e 00 00 50 65 61 6b 56 61 6c 75 65 00 9b 7c ....PeakValue...
00 00 50 52 49 56 00 00 00 11 00 00 41 76 65 72 ..PRIV......Aver
46 59 49 63 65 6e 74 65 72 41 05 00 00 00 00 00 ageLevel.A......

"ID3" seems to be the file marker for MP3 files.

MP3 sample file: Click sample.mp3 to download.

Audio data stored in MP3 files can be retrieved, played or edited by many popular free software:

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