MP3 and MP4 - these are the differences

Here we explain the differences between the two popular audio and multimedia formats MP3 and MP4.

MP3 audio format for music and speech

• The MP3 format (also: MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) is a pure audio format. Compression in this format means that, for example, music or speech can be saved in a space-saving manner, but this is accompanied by a slight loss of sound quality. The coding is standardized, MP3 files always have the extension .mp3.

MP4 can also contain video, images, graphics or text

• MP4 (also: MPEG-4 Part 14), on the other hand, is a container format for multimedia content based on Apple's "QuickTime". In contrast to MP3 format, MP4 files can also contain other content such as video, images, graphics or texts in addition to audio.
• However, there are certain restrictions in order to maintain compatibility, so that not every format can be contained in an MP4 container. For videos, MPEG-4 Part 10 (AVC / H.264), MPEG-1 Video, MPEG-2 Video and MPEG-4 Part 2 are permitted. Audio files can have the formats MP1, MP2, MP3 or AAC. JPEG and PNG formats are accepted for images, BIFS for images and text (subtitles).
• Analogous to .mp3, the official file extension is .mp4, but other extensions are often used to provide information about the existing contents of the container. Common are among others .m4v for pure video files (without audio) or .m4a for pure audio files (usually AAC files).