View source for Zip/rar.mp3

{{FormatInfo
|name=zip/rar.mp3
|formattype=electronic
|subcat=Audio and Music
}}
A crude method of wrapping multiple MP3 files into a playable MP3 can be done by using no compression/store in your zip/rar archiver and appending an .mp3 file extension.

The resulting file can be played in most mp3 players and still extracted back to the original files with zip/rar.

It also works with other archive formats like 7-Zip (7Z), not only ZIP or RAR. In fact, it works with any archive format, that uses no compression (and ZIP, RAR, 7Z and several others also has no compression in addition to compression) because a player ignores the header and other non-MP3 specific data.

In short:

* Using a archive format with compression makes the MP3 file unplayable because it compresses the MP3 header and the MP3 data.

* But: using a archive format with no compression makes the MP3 file playable because it doesn't compress the MP3 header and the MP3 data.

It also works with the "popular back in the 2000s" but then dead format, mp3PRO.

== Links ==
* https://forum.winmxworld.com/index.php?topic=6995.msg42586#msg42586


== See also ==
* [[MP3 wrapper]]