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MP3 101
Your
computer serves many purposes. With it you can surf the Web, write documents,
play games, and keep track of your finances. Did you know it can also make a
dandy jukebox? No, I'm not talking about a 10-disc CD-ROM platter. The next time
you feel like listening to music, instead of reaching for a CD, you could just
click a file on your hard drive.
There's a new audio compression format called
MPEG-1 layer 3, or MP3 for short. Songs recorded as MP3s sound almost as good as
songs in CD format and take up less than a tenth of the space. That means
they're easy to transfer via the Internet and store on your hard drive. With a
recordable CD drive (CD-R or CD-RW), you can save hundreds of MP3s on a single
disc. You can even take your MP3s on the road with a Walkman-like device called
the Diamond Rio. And of course, they're digital, so they'll sound the same every
time you play every copy you make.
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