by Gnomie Matt Gruett

Time for a little defining of terms. You might have heard of some of the terms I've mentioned in previous articles, but you're still not sure what's what. I won't get every term in, but I'll try and include enough to get a general idea, including some web sites and software. Time to check out Matt's MP3 Dictionary.

Algorithm - a mathematical formula or function used to encode or decode MP3 audio. More generically it can be defined as a set of rules.

Codec - a specific type of algorithm for encoding music.

Encoding - the process of taking an audio source (whether an audio signal or a file) and creating an MP3. This usually includes stripping out the extreme low and high frequencies and adding compression.

Jukebox - A player that can have many songs queued behind the current song that it is playing, just like a typical jukebox. Most players (both hardware and software) technically qualify as being jukebox capable and can edit, play and save playlists.

.mp3 - the commonly used extension for audio files containing MPEG Layer III encoded audio.

mp3.com - a music web site that hosts MP3s, which now is primarily comprised of unsigned bands.

MP3 Player - software (or hardware) that can playback MP3 (and possibly other audio) files as well as streamed MP3 content.

MPEG Layer III - a standard set by the Motion Picture Engineering Group (MPEG) defining the Layer III standard for encoding audio. This standard is used to create a MP3 file.

Napster - software program, which uses a client (a program installed on your PC) to query a central database for available MP3 files residing on other computers, which are also running Napster. Napster then retrieves the file from that remote client. Whether Napster still exists in its present form by the time you read this is anyone's guess.

Peer-based file sharing - a concept of file sharing which is used by programs such as Napster where the files are stored on individual computers but appear as one large network of available files.

Playlist - a custom created list of songs, which can be loaded into your player.

Ripping - The process of extracting audio from an audio CD. An entire CD (or selected tracks) is read off of the audio CD and converted into a file on the hard drive that can then be encoded.

Server-based file sharing - a concept of file sharing where files are centrally stored on a server. Web sites such as mp3.com use this concept.

I've done enough explaining for now I think. Next time we'll actually get our hands dirty and start playing some MP3s.

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