For those of you that do not know what MP3 is, it is audio recorded in MPEG level 3 encoding standards. MPEG means Moving Picture Expert Group. MP3 audio provides one major advantage over the majority of encoding methods of today. That is, it can store CD quality audio in a relatively small audio file. When recording at 44.1 Khz, 16-bit stereo sound the average WAV file of a song can be anywhere from 35-50 MB in size. This is enormous and too inefficient for it to be used for much good. However by encoding the audio in MP3, a compression ratio of about 11:1 is possible without any degradation of sound quality. This means your average song file will no longer be 35-50 MB, but instead about 3-5 MB in size. This allows these audio files to be used more effectively as they can easily stored in bulk amounts or transferred over a network or the Internet. Streaming is also possible for most fast connections and can allow CD quality transmissions over the Internet.