What Does MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2) Mean?

MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2) is an audio file format that uses the MPEG Audio Layer-2 compression standard defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3 to reduce the size of the file. It is a lossy format, which was replaced by MP3 because MP3 required a lower bit rate to achieve the same quality. However, MP2 is still predominantly used in broadcasting because it has higher error resilience than MP3 and sounds better at higher bit rates of 256 kbps and above.

MPEG-1 Audio Layer II is also known as MPEG-2 Audio Layer II.

Techopedia Explains MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2)

  • Sampling rates: 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz
  • Bit rates: 32, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256, 320 and 384 kbps