| In order to create a music file small ebough to use on most portable devices, you need to use compression. The most coomon form of music compression is MPEG Layer 3 (MP3).
Any time you use compression, you remove information from the original source. Some compression technologies insert placeholders to indicate what should fill the missing areas so the compression isn't very noticeable. In the case of MP3, that loss becomes noticeable if you use enough compression.
When you compress an audio file, it's often a compromise between quality and file size. The less compression you use, the better the sound. Of course, this leads to a larger file size.
Speech can be compressed much more than music because it uses fewer frequencies. Phone lines use quite a bit of compression since the phone companies have determined just the right amount of compression to allow compact transmissions while still offering acceptable sound quality for voices.
Music that uses a lot of frequencies is harder to compress because the sound quality starts to suffer with less compression than speech can use.
Choosing the right amount of compression can take a bit of trial and error. In the end, you need to listen to the results and decide what sounds right to you.
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