About our products & mp3 format

• Copyright information
• About our products
• About MP3 format

The publisher of all our products is «RMG Records».

Our shop offers you large selection of the MP3 CDs. You can receive detailed information about each MP3 CD by clicking on it's title or thumbnail (small) image. Each MP3 CD contains mp3 files and software necessary for playing this files on your computer:

• Winamp 2.75 (for more info see www.winamp.com)
• RMG Musical player (download, size 1089 Kb.).

• personal computer (requirement: Pentium-166 or higher, 64 Mb RAM, sound card, CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, speakers or headphones)
• mp3 player (for more info visit MP3 player buying guide)
• DVD player with mp3 support
• Any other devices with mp3 format support.

Many MP3 CDs contain not only mp3 files but also additional information such as biography of artists, photos, lyrics, tabs, MIDI files and even video.

Note: All the MP3 CDs selling in our shop produce in Russia. Though some information on them can be in russian (especially on CD covers) the most important information such as files and directory names, mp3 tags is in English. So it's not necessary to know Russian language to use this MP3 CDs.

MP3 is a digital audio codec; that is, it's a method of compressing and decompressing digitized sound. In the standard CD audio format, one minute of music takes up roughly 10 megabytes. When converted to MP3, that same minute of music takes up only about 1 megabyte. Files are usually named as "*.mp3".

An MP3 file can also contain information about the file itself in a tag. The tag can contain things like the artist's name, a graphic (usually the CD cover art), a URL for further information, the song's lyrics, the genre, etc Because of their relatively small size, MP3 files can be recorded on the CD and than copied easily on your computer's hard drive.

Playback options
Because MP3 files are created using a process of encoding, they can only be played back by using the proper decoding. MP3 decoding is available with a range of PC applications, as well as with many types of A/V gear. Here are some ways you can play back MP3s:

• On your computer. Most jukebox-style music management programs can decode MP3s, as well as many other types of audio files. These "player" applications often come bundled with computer operating system software; some are also available for free via Internet download. If you listen a lot at your PC, powered speakers or headphones are a good investment.
• Using a CD player with built-in MP3 decoding. There are home, portable, and car CD players with this feature; they play MP3 CDs that you create yourself (usually with a PC's CD-R/W drive). A single MP3 CD holds up to 10 hours of music!
• Using a portable MP3 player. These digital music players tend to be extremely compact and lightweight, and many offer completely skip-free playback. Though often referred to as "MP3 players", these portables usually support a number of audio file types.

Sound quality and bitrate
The MP3 codec works by removing portions of the original signal which are determined to be essentially inaudible - a technique known as "perceptual coding." MP3 and other codecs that use perceptual coding are "lossy" forms of compression: that is, some frequencies in the original signal are lost in the encoding process, and can't be restored in playback.

However, despite its lossy nature, MP3 can still deliver near-CD sound quality. Many people find the compromise in audio fidelity to be perfectly acceptable for everyday listening, considering the easy storage and transferability that you gain.

What is the bitrate?
The bitrate is the number of kilobits per second of data in your audio file .The bitrate indicates the level of data compression used in coding an audio file. The higher the bitrate, the higher the sound quality of the compressed file. The higher the compression, the smaller the file and the lower the sound quality of the file (see the table below).
 

128 kbs	Hall's noises are slightly less defined than the original. The violin is a bit less present and the piano attacks a bit less sharp. The voice is nearly identical to the original recording but sibilants are less pronounced. We can notice the same spatialization problem as with the 112kbs's one although there is again a good improvement compared to the 112kbs rate. Download sample mp3 file: Led Zeppelin - Rock'n'Roll (size 3,42 Mb; playing time 3:33 min)
160 kbs	The sound is more natural than 128kbs but the improvement is less spectacular than during the two preceding stages. The sound is different from the original, without however being possible to tell in what. I think that the difference resides more in what we feel rather than in what we hear. Download sample mp3 file: Aerosmith - My Girl (size 3,8 Mb; playing time 3:10 min)
192 kbs	The sound is not felt as the original recording. It is however totally impossible to tell in what. Download sample mp3 files: Dave Brubeck & Jimmy Rushing - There'll Be Some Changes Made (size 3,13 Mb; playing time 2:10 min) The Doors - People Are Strange (size 3,18 Mb playing time 2:12 min) Handel - Concerto No.1 in B flat major, HWV 312 - Allegro (size 2,16 Mb; playing time 1:29 min)
256 kbs	The sound is indiscernible from the original. It is impossible to make the difference with the original recording. Download sample mp3 file: Richard Strauss - Also sprach Zarathustra (size 2,52 Mb; playing time 1:18 min)