Whether you’re going for a walk, working on a project or simply decompressing during a hectic family gathering, music can bring peace and focus. Dedicated MP3 players used to be the best way to enjoy your favorite tunes on the go, but today’s connected smartphones often do the trick – and so do a host of other digital audio devices like tablets and laptops. That being said if you’re looking to truly unplug and enjoy your music without the distraction of nonstop notifications, check out our selection of bestselling mp3 music.
How Do MP3s Work?
The MP3 file format is perhaps the most widely used digital form of music. It revolutionized music distribution in the 1990’s when file-swapping services and portable MP3 players hit the market, allowing people to store their entire music collections on a single device and share songs with other users. The format itself is a compression algorithm that takes digitized sound and shrinks it down to a fraction of its original size. This reduces the amount of data needed to store a minute of music to a single megabyte.
This is achieved by taking all the data points from an original waveform, which can contain up to a million bits per second, and reducing it to a smaller set of bits. The MP3 file starts with a short header, which acts as a kind of index card, followed by the actual music data itself. It’s the job of the compression algorithm to eliminate as much of that data as possible without creating audible artifacts, namely cuts to tones outside of the human hearing range or “smoothing” those frequencies so they won’t be so noticeable.
One of the first tests of this compression algorithm was an acapella recording by Suzanne Vega, who was known for her ability to reproduce her voice with great accuracy. As a result, she was dubbed the “Mother of MP3.” Her acapella version of Tom’s Diner is still commonly played as a test for how well the MP3 compression process worked.
While the MP3 file format is very popular, higher quality options do exist that maintain the full fidelity of the original music. Increasingly, downloads from music services like eMusic and streaming sites offer tracks in FLAC or Apple Lossless formats, which take up more space on your hard drive but play back at CD-quality. In addition, many dedicated MP3 players now come equipped with the ability to play high-resolution files as well. Whatever your preferred music listening experience, we’ve got the perfect mp3 player to suit your needs.