Audio Formats - MP3

Probably the most commonly used tool in the Linux multimedia toolkit.
mp3 is MPEG audio layer 3.
mp3 audio format compresses cd audio format by approximately a factor of 12, from approximately 1500 kB/sec to about 128kB/sec with little reduction in sound quality.
The mp3 Consortium owns the patent on the mp3 format, and has started charging royalties. Hence, many newer players, e.g. Pocket Tunes for Palm must charge for the use of the mp3 decoder.

Probably the most commonly used tool in the Linux multimedia toolkit.