MP3: The Tunes, They Are A Changin'
MP3 is one of the many waves of the high-tech revolution
washing over us all. It's making fundamental changes in the way we think about music and
it's doing it right now, as you read this. If you're ready to join the revolution or
you're just wondering what all the fuss is about, here's a guide to help get you jacked-in
to the exciting upheaval.
What is MP3? It's simply a form of digital compression that
enables users to grab songs off of the Internet quickly and then play 'em at home on their
computers or on their music systems or in their cars or when they're exercising, or
anywhere else, for that matter.
MP3 is changing not only the way music is reproduced, but
also the look of peoples’ music collections, just as surely as CDs did when they
overthrew vinyl as the preferred format. At some point in the not-too-distant future,
it'll be more commonplace to buy recordings of your favorite songs from the Internet than
it will be to drive to the mall or local music store. We'll no longer think of music as
coming to us in the shape of familiar things -- no more CDs or tapes -- but rather as
invisible files on a PC or PC-like storage device that are no more or less physical than a
Microsoft Word document or a web page.
Digital storage of music
Before we go further, let’s return to digital
compression, or go back even a step further to how music is stored digitally (we'll get to
how it's compressed afterwards). When music is stored digitally -- on CD, DVD, MiniDisc, etc.
-- it is turned into a numerical representation; that is, the music is turned into a
series of the numbers "1" and "0." These ones and zeroes are
represented on your CDs, for instance, as many, many thousands of pits and flat surfaces
on the CD (invisible to the naked eye), which, when read by your CD player's laser and
translated by its digital processor, become the sound of music. For example, a series of
ones and zeroes might look like this: 10001010101101. To you or I, that series of numbers
means nothing. To your CD player, that particular series of numbers might be the coded
instructions for the very first part of a note sung by Alicia Keys, John Lennon, or Billie
Holiday.
The coded digital representation of music used on CD is
known as MPEG-1 (MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group). The form of digital
representation used in MP3 has been shortened from its original, unwieldy acronym, MPEG-3.
What MP3 does to the ones and zeroes that represent music is a little surprising: it
throws many of them away. Gone. Bye-bye. MP3 throws away tiny bits of noise that exist
outside the realm of human hearing and then it performs some mathematical gyrations on
redundant information, shrinking the size of the file further. For instance, if the series
10010101101101010 comes up repeatedly in a song, MP3 will encode the duplications so that
they take up less space on your computer's hard drive.
The first pass MP3 makes at a file is called a lossy
form of compression because data is lost (discarded) in the process, while the second is a
lossless form of compression because data isn't thrown away, even though it is
being squeezed into a more compact configuration.
What all of that throwing-away does is reduce the size of
the file on your computer. That means that once you've gone onto the Internet and
downloaded a song onto your computer, it takes up about 1/10 as much space on your hard
drive as an MP3 file than it would have had it been stored in its original MPEG-1 format.
Drawbacks of MP3
We've just mentioned the biggest drawback of MP3, as well
as its best feature: that ol' digital compression. When you compress sound, no matter how
carefully it's done, it distorts music. As we've explained, MP3s throw away sound -- said
to be extraneous sounds -- but if you listen to an MP3 and then listen to the exact same
song played on a CD, there will be no doubt in your mind that you're hearing a much
fuller, richer sound from the CD. Why? The MP3 compression system isn't perfect. The more
you shrink a file, the more you'll notice a loss of detail in the music.
You'll also notice differences between various MP3s. Folks
in the MP3 business say that you can get "CD-quality music" from songs recorded
at 128kps (a measurement of how much information has been stored in an MP3 file, which
means it's also a measurement of how much has been thrown away). Download a copy of a
128kps song, available free from MP3.com and many, many other sites on the Internet, and
then find a 448kps version (it retains more of the song's original information) of the
same song and listen to the two. The 448kps version is undeniably better sounding.
Which rate you'll prefer for your storage of MP3s will
depend on what's most important to you: if the quality of the music reigns supreme with
you, you'll want to find the songs stored in high bit-rates (160kps or above). If you're
concerned with getting as many songs as you can get onto your computer, then you'll opt
for a low bit-rate (all the way down to 20kps).
From the computer to the music system and beyond
There are other ways of controlling the quality of sound
when it comes to MP3s. Eventually, most devotees of MP3 tire of the sound quality of the
music played through their computers. They choose to upgrade the quality of their
computer's speakers or they copy their music files onto a portable MP3 player, burn (copy)
songs onto CD-Rs or CD-RWs (recordable CDs) or hook up their computer to their home music
system -- or they do all of these things.
Let's take a look at each option.
Upgrading your computer's speakers: Some companies
that make high-quality stereo gear -- Harman/Kardon and Yamaha, for example -- make
speakers for computers. You can probably make a pretty big improvement in your computer's
sound by spending $100 on speakers for it. Naturally, you can also spend quite a bit more
than $100.
Portable MP3 players: These popular items are the
size of a portable CD player, generally. The technology in these units is much the same as
those employed by CD players, with one significant difference: there are no moving parts
in MP3 players, so there are no skips in the music while you're jogging or driving.
The biggest limitation of portables is memory -- some
players have no more than the capacity to store an hour's worth of music without memory
upgrades (memory cards you buy and insert into the player). Others come with tiny hard
drives enabling them to store hundreds of hours of songs. The problem with the models with
the hard drives is that you bring moving parts, and the skipping problems, back into the
picture.
Recording your own CDs with MP3s: You do this with a
CD-R (recordable CD) or a CD-RW (rewritable CD) drive in your computer. A CD-R drive
allows you to record your MP3 files on a blank CD, which, like a pre-recorded CD you'd buy
at a store, can't be changed once it's made. On the other hand, a CD-RW allows you to
create discs that can be erased and then used to record again. The problem with CD-RWs is
that some CD players won't play them.
Also, with both formats, you need to have a CD player
that'll play MP3 files. Virtually all new CD and DVD players are capable of playing MP3s,
but some older models are not. Be sure to check for MP3-compatibility on your playback
device before springing for a CD burner.
MP3 and your home stereo system: There are a couple
of ways to play your MP3 files over your system at home. First, you can hook your computer
up to your stereo receiver or preamp using the PC's RCA outputs and receiver's RCA inputs.
If your computer's sound card doesn't have an RCA output, it's okay. You can still link
the PC and stereo by connecting a 1/8" jack to your computer's sound-card output,
running a length of patch cord to the receiver, and then, using an RCA adapter, plugging
it into an input on your receiver or preamp. Now you can play MP3 files on your computer
and hear them through those nice big speakers in your living room.
(You can also connect a portable MP3 player to your stereo
this way. The same jack, cable and RCA adapter will do the trick.)
Another option is to pop for one of the new MP3 stereo
components that allow you to store up to hundreds of CDs digitally. The makers claim that
these components eliminate the need for "bulky CDs." They connect to your PC,
your TV, and your stereo -- interfacing throughout your home -- enabling you to download
hours and hours of music to a storage system made to look at home next to your sleek
stereo components and accessible through on-screen menus on your computer monitor and
television.
Also available are wireless peripherals that connect your
PC and stereo by way of 900MHz radio-frequency transmitters.
Everyone who links their computer and stereo has to grapple
with questions of convenience. Do you listen to music in the same room where your PC is?
Is a PC just too cumbersome to deal with when you want to just relax and listen to tunes?
These are certainly questions worth asking if you're seriously considering a jump into MP3
via your stereo.
The MP3 controversy
No discussion of MP3 is complete without some mention of
the piracy controversy surrounding it. Even if some folks weren't quite sure what Napster
was (simply software that enabled you to seek and download songs from other Internet
users), nearly everyone learned its name and got some idea that it enabled theft of music.
While Napster is, as of this writing, shut down, other similar music-sharing software is
available on the Internet, allowing people to get copyrighted songs without paying anyone
anything for them.
Is it theft? That's up to you to decide, of course. Lots of
musicians, including, most notably, the members of Metallica, have argued long and hard
that Napster and its software siblings enable users to steal musicians' art and money from
them and their record labels.
On the other side of the issue stands Courtney Love, leader
of the group Hole, who, at the height of the Napster controversy, said, "New
technology that exposes our music to a larger audience can only be a good thing." She
argues that the real thieves aren't the people on the Internet swapping songs, but rather
the record labels who've been soaking up most of the profits.
If you decide that file swapping via a Napster-like program
isn't right for you, don't think that you'll be shut out of the MP3 experience. You can
still rip (copy) songs from your own CDs on your computer's CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive and,
using one of the many free software programs on the 'Net, construct libraries of your
favorite tunes to play back on your PC or transfer those song-files to a portable MP3
player. Or you can make use of MP3.com, a free file-sharing service, or one of the
fee-based MP3 sites, and add to your music collection as fast as your Internet connection
will allow.
No matter how you decide to join the revolution of MP3 --
or even if you decide to sit back and watch before determining whether MP3 offers what you
want in music reproduction -- this is an exciting time for music lovers. In MP3, we've got
another tool to use to explore one of the best things in life: the music that stirs our
hearts.
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