Difference Between MP3 and MP4: MP4 is a newer file format and supports video encoding, compared with MP3, which is older and is only for audio files. MP4 is a multimedia container and can technically support not just audio and video but also text and images.
What is MP3?
MP3 is short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. It is used for audio and uses a compression algorithm that introduces loss, meaning it is a “lossy” compression format.
It is one of the most commonly used audio formats available and has been the standard for quite some time.
Uncompressed audio files are rather large. Just look at any WAV file. This is because the sound is very complex and the translation of it into a digital format that a computer can understand takes a lot of data.
MP3 works to make file sizes smaller by using what is called psychoacoustic models. They get rid of data that most people would not hear because it is too low or high.
By doing this, file sizes can be greatly reduced. A 128 k bit/s MP3 file is about 1/11th the size of the corresponding file on an uncompressed CD.
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What is MP4?
MP4 is short for MPEG-4 Part 14. MP4 is based on MPEG-4 Part 12 which was in turn based on Apple’s MOV file type.
MP4 is a container format, meaning it is used to store audio and/or video data, rather than to code the information.
MP4 video and audio can also be streamed over the internet. This is also true of most other modern container formats. Because MP4 is a container format, it does not have a standard method of coding the audio or video information.
Instead, codecs dictate how the audio or video will be coded and possibly compressed. For audio, Advanced Audio Coding, or AAC, is the most popular codec for compressing audio for transfer on the internet.
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The Difference Between MP3 and MP4 Players
MP3 and MP4 are two compression formats used for digital audio players. While MP3 format is used for compressing audio files to store or transfer them on the internet, MP4 format is used for multimedia.
The MP3 format was introduced in the market in 1999, while the MP4 format was released in 2003. MP3 is an acronym for MPEG-3 (Moving Pictures Experts Group) and MP4 is an acronym for MPEG-4.
The original name of the MP3 format is MPEG-1 audio layer 3, while the original name of the MP4 format is MPEG-4 part 14.
The basic difference between an MP3 player and an Mp4 player is that MP3 handles only audio, while MP4 handles audio, video, text, and images.
Read on further to know more differences between MP3 and MP4 players.
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