MP3 Terminology

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)
A successor to MP3, which allows lower bit rates whilst maintaining higher quality. Used by Apple for its popular iTunes music player. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding and it offers better compression and better sound quality than MP3. Like MP3, it is a form of lossy compression. This means that certain freqencies of sound are eliminated during the encoding process. AAC encoding is generally regarded as producing very good results.

Burning
The process of copying music that is stored on your PC onto a compact disc, so that it can be played in CD players and other devices that can play a CD. If for example you want to listen to music in your car or on your home stereo, burning takes the digital music track stored on your PC, converts it into the format that CD players require, and copies it onto a CD. To burn music to a CD, you will need software that converts the music files and "burns" them onto the CD. To do this, you can either use the burning tools within Microsoft's Windows Media Player, or use other burning software that is often provided with your PC.

Bit
Binary digit. The smallest unit of data in a digital system. A bit is a single one or zero. A group of bits, such as 8-bits or 16-bits, compose a byte. The number of bits in a byte depends upon the processing system being used. Typical byte sizes are 8, 16, and 32.

CODEC
"Coder-decoder." A device that converts analog video and audio signals into a digital format for transmission. Also converts received digital signals back into analog format.

Download Audio (Downloads)
Music transmitted over the Internet and stored (copied) to the hard disk of your PC. Once the music is stored on your PC it can then be played as often as you want from the PC, or alternatively you can Burn your music to a CD or copy it to another PC or Portable Music Player.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)
DRM helps to protect the copyright of material by defining how the content can be used. The music file is encrypted before it is distributed to you. The first time that you listen to the track on your PC (in Windows Media Player), the software accesses this Download Site automatically and downloads a licence that enables you to store and use the file legally on your PC. Once you have acquired this licence you do not have to get this license again, as it stored on your PC for future reference when needed.

Encoding Rate
This is the rate at which the original music file is sampled, in order to create the digital music file. Music files with a higher sampling rate (in other words a higher number) have the best quality and so will have the best sound quality. Sampling rates on digital music sites generally vary from 64Kbit/s to 192Kbit/s. Wherever possible music on this site is sampled at 192Kbits/s, which ensures excellent sound quality (the human ear cannot distinguish the difference between music at 192Kbit/s and music sampled at higher rates).

Genre
This is a term used to describe the particular type of music. Music on this site is stored by genre so you can search for all of the music that we have within that category. Some examples of genre are: Rock, Pop, Rap, Classical, Jazz.

Legal Music
Music downloaded from this site is 100% legal. To provide legal downloads, we have set up agreements with all of the record labels and other copyright holders to allow us to distribute their content via this download service. In comparison, music downloaded from P2P Networks, especially music from well-known artists, is nearly always subject to copyright restrictions, which do not allow the files to be shared on P2P Networks, and as such downloading copyrighted music from these sites is illegal.

Licence
To ensure that digital downloads are legal, a Licence is provided for each and every track that you download from this site. This is technically a "key" that unlocks the encrypted music file and allows you to play the music. Just like a key which only works in one lock, this Licence will only work on your PC and with the music files for which it was provided.

MP3
Officially MPEG Audio Layer-3, this is an encoding format that compresses the size of a music file so that more files can be stored on Portable Music Players or on CD's with little reduction in the quality of the sound recording. MP3 was one of the first encoding formats to be developed, and the term is used as a general term to describe digital music, and digital music players in general. Modern Portable Music Players tend to play both MP3 and WMA file formats. A compression ratio of up to 12 to 1 compression is possible, which produces high sound quality.

P2P Networks
Peer-to-Peer Networks are websites, and Internet connected networks that allow users to share content with one another. Examples of peer-to-peer networks are sites such as Kazaa and Morpheus. Although peer-to-peer networks are not illegal in their own right, the distribution and sharing (or downloading) of copyrighted files is itself generally illegal.

Portable Music Player
A device specifically designed to play digital music on the go. They are effectively modern day versions of a 'Walkman' or 'Discman'. The major difference with Portable Music Players is that they store music on a hard drive or within an internal memory, rather than on CDs or cassettes. Music is transferred to a Portable Music Player directly from your PC, and most modern players support the WMA music format as sold on this site. They offer the advantage that they can store a huge amount of music, which can be quickly and easily transferred to the player.

Ripping
The process of taking information (such as music from a CD) and copying and converting it into a digital format so it can be stored on your PC or another device such as a Portable Music Player.

Streamed Audio (Streaming)
Streaming audio allows for on-the-fly listening to an audio file. The audio file is streamed from a server where it is received and stored in your buffer on your computer. If you use WinAmp or RealAudio, you will see a message displayed telling you that the audio file is being buffered. The file is not saved on your hard drive.

WMA
Window's Media Audio is Microsoft's audio encoding format that is starting to gain popularity due to its high quality output at lower file sizes. A 96 kbps (and in some tests a 64 kbps) wma file is equivalent in sound quality to a 128 kbps MP3 file.

Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is a free piece of software that is normally included as part of the suite of software programmes provided when you bought your PC. If you do not have Windows Media Player it is available for download from Microsoft's website at www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/.