In the simplest terms, MP3 is one of several digital audio compression formats. It is currently the most popular because of its high sound quality and small file size, and because MP3 encoders are widely available on the Internet. Other digital audio compression formats include: Windows Media (WMA), Real Audio (RAM), and Liquid Audio.

In more complex terms, MP3 is short for Motion Pictures Expert Group, Version I, Layer III. The Motion Pictures Expert Group is an international organization that develops and maintains standards for digital formats for video and audio. The group was originally formed to maintain consistent formats to be used to compress and distribute films. Version and Layer numbers identify the group’s different compression formats for digital video and audio. The standards maintained by the Motion Pictures Expert Group allow engineers to build encoders and decoders for compressing and reading digital video and audio. These encoders and decoders use complicated mathematical algorithms called “codecs” to create and read files. If the standard for a certain format is followed, files created by one engineer’s encoder should be readable by another engineer’s decoder. The MP3 standard, however, is very broad and has allowed a large number of codecs to be built that meet the basic requirements. Therefore, MP3 codecs vary widely in their quality and efficiency.

To sum up, MP3 is a digital audio compression format. MP3 files are created by MP3 encoders, and are read by MP3 decoders. The encoders and decoders use codecs to create and read the files.

Files that are created using an MP3 encoder usually have the extension, ".mp3". This file association tells any program that tries to read the file that it is encoding according to the MP3 standard.

Now that you know what they are, I bet you want to get some MP3s. There are a couple of different ways to get MP3 files. You can download them from the Internet, or you can create them from your CDs. The next two sections will explain how to do both.