What is MP3?

The MP3 algorithm development started in 1987, with a joint cooperation of Fraunhofer IIS-A and the University of Erlangen. It is standardized as ISO-MPEG Audio Layer-3 (IS 11172-3 and IS 13818-3).

Its adavntages are the high compression rates (1/11 of the original size, still retaining considerable quality), the high availability of decoders and the low CPU requirements for playback (486 DX2-100 is enough for real-time decoding). No wonder that people appreciated it highly and the format is extremely popular today.

It supports multichannel files (Although there's no implementation yet), sampling rates from 16kHz to 24kHz (MPEG2 Layer 3) and 32kHz to 48kHz (MPEG1 Layer 3)

The quality of compression is so high that you won't distinguish the results of MP3 at the 160-224 kbps range from the original materials in most of the cases.

Pros

• Widespread acceptance, support in nearly all hardware audio players and devices
• An ISO standard, part of MPEG specs
• Fast decoding, lower complexity than AAC or Vorbis
• Anyone can create their own implementation (Specs and demo sources available)
• Relaxed licensing schedule

Cons

• Lower performance / efficiency than modern codecs
• Problem cases that trip out all transform codecs
• Sometimes, maximum bitrate (320kbps) isn't enough
• No multichannel implementations
• Unusable for high definition audio (sampling rates higher than 48kHz)

Total Audio Converter supports the following conversions with MP3 format files:

MP3 to MP3 (change bitrate or frequency) MP3 to WMA MP3 to WAV MP3 to OGG MP3 to FLAC MP3 to AAC MP3 to MP4 MP3 to MPC MP3 to APE

WMA to MP3 WAV to MP3 OGG to MP3 RA to MP3 CDA to MP3 FLAC to MP3 APE to MP3 APL to MP3 AAC to MP3 MPC to MP3 MPP to MP3 MP4 to MP3 OFR to MP3 SPX to MP3 TTA to MP3 WV to MP3 MOD to MP3

Another supported audio formats

• MPEG Audio Layer format (MP3)
• Windows Media Audio format (WMA)
• WAVE audio format (WAV)
• OGG file format (OGG)
• Real Audio format (RA, RMM, RAM, RAX, RPM, RM, RMVB)
• Audio Tracks format (CDA)
• Free Lossless Audio Codec format (FLAC)
• Monkey's Audio format (APE, APL)
• Advanced audio coding (AAC, M4A)
• Musepack formats (MPP, MPC, MP+)
• MPEG-4 international standard (MP4)
• OptimFROG (OFR)
• Speex (SPX)
• True Audio codec (TTA)
• WavPack (WV)
• MOD music (MOD)