History

The MP3 was developed by German scientists in the mid 1980s. The format became an international standard after it was used by the Moving Picture Expert Group as a smaller, digital audio source that could be tracked along with digital video.

Compression

An MP3 is not an exact reproduction of the source recording due to its compressed sound. During the compression process, some background sounds are lost due to the reduction of the file size.

Bit Rate

Audio is compressed and stored in bit rates that make up the MP3. Bit rates refer to the amount of audio information that is reproduced per second, and they remove inaudible frequencies from a recording.

File Size

Bit rate size determines the sound quality of an MP3; when bit rates are higher, the sound quality of the MP3 is higher. However, larger bit rates increase file size and reduce the number of files that can be stored or saved to your digital device.

Considerations

Numerous studies have found that the average person is less likely to detect the losses in sound on a properly encoded MP3 since the human ear does not usually detect soft or background sounds that are omitted from compressed files.

Source:

BBC: What is an mp3?

MP3 Explained