The MP3 format

MP3 is a very popular format, because it is usually indistinguishable from a normal CD track, yet the files can be a 10th the size or smaller making it possible to download it over the internet without waiting too long. Of course the name "MP3" has been tinged with controversy because of the ease with which copied copyright material can be distributed. However all the mp3 files on the mfiles site are totally legal and free to download for personal use.

The MP3 files themselves were created by playing MIDI files and capturing the soundcard output as a WAV file and then compressing it into MP3 format. You can find out more about this process in our description of file types. To play MP3 files you will need a player application. If you are using a PC then it will probably already have "Windows Media Player" which will play this format. Alternatively you can download many different players such as WinAmp or Real Player, and most of these will allow you to create favourite "Play Lists".

MP3 Compression

MP3 is essentially just a compressed form of digital sound as stored on a CD, on a DVD or in "WAV" files. The compression process removes those parts of the sound that the ear is rarely aware of, so that the degradation in quality is not noticable under most circumstances. The mp3 files on mfiles were original compressed at 32 kb in order to save on our bandwidth costs for the website. However bandwidth costs are cheaper now and the majority of our visitors use broadband or equivalent, so we are in the process of re-recording all our mp3 files using better quality software instruments and samples, and then rendering these at the standard compression factor of 128kb. This results in file sizes approximately an eleventh of the equivalent CD track or wav file.

See the file types page for more information about how we create our mp3 files.