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All About Mp3s
from the 8.10.04
issue of WorshipIdeas.com
As I've been teaching
at worship conferences
this summer,
I've discovered that
a lot of worship
leaders
don't know the
ins and outs of digital music.
An MP3 is simply
an audio file. Just
as you
would read a
text file (say, a
letter you've written)
in a word
processing program
(like Microsoft Word)
or view a digital
picture file in a
photo editing program
(like
Photoshop,)
you can hear an MP3
file by playing it
in
music software
like Windows Media
Player, Winamp or
MusicMatch
jukebox
(there are tons of
music software programs
out there.)
MP3s are fairly new.
Computer audio started
in the WAV file
format, and your
PC still uses WAVs
- a WAV
makes the sound
you hear when the
computer starts,
shuts
down, and alerts
you. A WAV file is
when AOL says "you've
got mail." In
XP,
check out all the
WAV sounds your computer
can make:
>start >control
panel >sounds
and
audio devices
>click the "sound"
tab
WAVs are okay for
short soundbites,
but song-length
WAVs are
huge (WAVs are used
to create CDs you
buy
in stores.) A
typical 3 minute
song in the WAV format
will
be at least 30
megabytes. Huge files
like this quickly
use
up space on your
hard drive and take
literally forever
to
download,
especially if you
only have a dial-up
Internet
connection.
That's where the
MP3 comes in. MP3s
are created
by
sophisticated algorithms
that subtly take
away sonic parts
of a song that you
don't really hear.
MP3s
are generally
reduced by a factor
of 10. If a song
was
32 megabytes in the
WAV format, the MP3
version would be
about
3 megabytes.
Because so much audio
data has been removed
(highs, lows,
barely audible parts,)
the MP3 will not
sound
exactly the
same, but it's pretty
close to the original.
Most people
will never hear the
difference - although
audiophiles
certainly can. (My
audio engineer friend
in Nashville was
horrified that I
was selling my songs
via
MP3 downloads. But
then again, his ears
are so highly sensitive
that he can
probably hear a dog
whistle!) Personally,
I can't tell the
difference between
a high-quality MP3
and
an original WAV
version of the same
song.
Always ready to get
in on the action,
Microsoft
created
their own version
of the MP3 and called
it
a WMA (Windows
Media Audio.) Some
people think a WMA
file
sounds better
than an MP3 file.
If you purchase songs
online
from Lifeway
or Walmart, you'll
be downloading WMA
files.
These two
websites are my favorite
online music stores
for Christian
music - links are
at:
http://www.worshiphomepage.com/mp3s.shtml
So basically an MP3
is a little file
that
sits in your
computer or on a
portable MP3 player.
It
might be your
favorite song, an
audio book, you name
it
- anything that
can be recorded. |
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