Where does this come from, and can I check it?

It drops detail masked by louder sounds nearby in frequency and time. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a music fact?

Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

MP3 throws away sound you would not notice

It drops detail masked by louder sounds nearby in frequency and time The coding was developed by Fraunhofer in the 1980s and standardised in the 1990s. File sizes fell enough to send music over slow connections. Listeners disagreed about the artifacts, but the format reshaped how music moved between people. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Britannica

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Technology trivia

More facts like this

MP3 shrank music by throwing detail awayFraunhofer's perceptual coder became part of an ISO standard in 1993 The compact disc reached shops in 1982Sony and Philips developed the optical format together Records got measurably louder and flatterHeavy compression raised average level while squashing peaks The loudness war flattened CD masters for two decadesEngineers squeezed peaks with compressors so their records would sound louder Each extra bit adds about six decibels of rangeSixteen bit gives roughly 96 decibels between the quietest and loudest sound The DX7 put digital synthesis in every studioYamaha's 1983 keyboard used frequency modulation instead of analogue circuits

Tags: compression, digital, formats

MP3 throws away sound you would not notice: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: It drops detail masked by louder sounds nearby in frequency and time. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a music fact?: Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.