[Neuro]

"MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular digital audio encoding, lossy compression format, and algorithm, designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners.

MP3 is an audio-specific compression format. It provides a representation of pulse-code modulation–encoded audio in much less space than straightforward methods, by using psychoacoustic models to discard components less audible to human hearing, and recording the remaining information in an efficient manner. Similar principles are used by JPEG, a lossy image compression format.

There are several limitations inherent to the MP3 format that can not be overcome by any MP3 encoder.
Newer audio compression formats such as Vorbis and AAC no longer have these limitations.
In technical terms, MP3 is limited in the following ways:
* Bit rate is limited to a maximum of 320 kb/s (while some encoders can create higher bit rates, there is little-to-no support for these higher bit rate mp3s)
* Time resolution can be too low for highly transient signals, causing some smearing of percussive sounds
* Frequency resolution is limited by the small long block window size, decreasing coding efficiency
* No scale factor band for frequencies above 15.5/15.8 kHz
* Joint stereo is done on a frame-to-frame basis
* Encoder/decoder overall delay is not defined, which means lack of official provision for gapless playback. However, some encoders such as LAME can attach additional metadata that will allow players that are aware of it to deliver seamless playback.
Nevertheless, a well-tuned MP3 encoder can perform competitively even with these restrictions."

Možda se približio losslessu. Ali to i dalje ne znači da se može izjednačavati sa kvalitetom audio CD-a, SACD-a ili DVD-A...