Mp3 players have become the preferred 'boom box' on the market today. They are small and fun, and players can hold literally thousands of songs to provide hours of music. But there aren't just mp3 files to match mp3 players - there are wma files as well. So what is an mp3 file, and what's the difference between the two types of files? They're both just music files, right? Yes and no. Let's start at the beginning, and talk about what an mp3 file is, before touching on what's similar between mp3 files and their wma counterparts.

Mp3 files are commonly referred to as audio files, but they are really compression formats. Music files on CDs are very large, and can be as big as 32 MB. To burn, download quickly or to store properly audio files on your computer, it's best to compress them and squash them into files that are manageable. An mp3 format takes a CD-quality song and compresses it to about 1-tenth of its original size, leaving you with mp3 files.

Are Compressed Files as Good as the Originals?

Compressing files isn't as simple as trying to make something very large into something very small by squeezing it hard. To make mp3 files, the formatting takes the original song, and actually removes parts of it that humans don't need to hear. In general, there are noises the human ear cannot hear, and those types of noises can be found in audio files. The process of compression finds those useless noises, and removes them. What remains are mp3 files that are not quite as good as the original, but we can't really hear the difference anyways.

So What is the Big Deal About Mp3 files?

Knowing how mp3 files are made isn't really interesting. Knowing what you can do with mp3 files and how to manipulate the data on a computer is far more fun. Thanks to the creation of mp3 technology, many people who would never usually have touched a computer have become adept at creating and moving files back and forth on their computers, players and the Internet. Mp3 files have actually educated far more people on computer basics than any computer course. Almost anyone can access mp3 files, and transferring data is quick and easy.

No matter what walk of life you come from, and no matter what age you are, music is probably a part of your life. Classical, hip hop or popular songs are found everywhere today, and people enjoy listening to music every day. The mp3 file movement has allowed everyone to enjoy music no matter what they are doing - gardening, bicycling, even driving. New technologies have been conceived and created to support mp3 files. The powerful contribution of tools, changes and developments mp3 files have brought to the audio, electronics and digital world have surpassed any other on the market today.