Oldest known version of this page was edited on 2005-06-25 21:27:36 by YanB [translation done]

MP3 Audio archive

MP3 is for MPEG1 Layer 3. Because it's extremely popular and it's the de facto standard for audio content, MP3 is a proprietary audio compression format which entails a loss. Even though it is a standard documented by the MPEG group (Moving Picture Coding Experts Group) it's development is in great part the work of the Fraunhofer Institute which has protected its work with a patent. Then the Fraunhofer Institute united its patent with that of Thomson Multimedia (RCA), and started to claim royalties for the use of the format. There are currently 18 patents which protect the different components of MP3 codification. In practice, it is impossible to implement the use of MP3 without using some part of these patents. Other companies also own patents on MP3 and in the future any of them could start claiming royalties.

MP3 can be substituted for its open format equivalent, the Ogg Vorbis (.OGG) format or by Musepack (.MPC), a format which is always open and with loss* but which privileges quality.