Just a quickie for the 10% who're interested. I read an interesting article comparing the various MP3 encoders by encoding speed and quality, and the question came up as to why they should have different quality at all, considering MPEG 2 Audio Layer 3 (MP3) is a standard.

The answer lies in the difference between a verb and a noun. MPEG2 is an 'encoding standard' where encoding is a noun. If it were a verb, it would mean that the process of encoding is standardized, but what it actually specifies is only the nature of the final result (the 'encoding'). the idea is that you can use whatever technique or algorithm you like to encode audio or video into an MPEG encoding, but that encoding must be decodable by a specified, standardized process, so it's 'encode once, decode anywhere.'

It's a nitpick to most, but for the MP3 and MPEG afficionados out there, it might make a little more sense of the variety of encoders out there.