13/10/2025
In 1991, a small team at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute revolutionized digital sound. They discovered that by removing frequencies beyond the range of human hearing, they could shrink audio files by up to 95% without compromising quality. The result was the MP3 format — a breakthrough that made online music sharing, digital libraries, and streaming platforms possible. What began as a lab experiment ended up changing how the world listens to music.