MP3
What is MP3 ?
MP3 means MPEG Audio Layer 3. It's a way of compressing audio
while keeping the CD-quality. This can be achieved by cutting
away the parts, your ear can't hear anyway, from a CD-quality WAV
file. What you get can be up to 10 times smaller. It can even go
to 20 or even 80 times smaller, but then, quality has to be
sacrificed. This all means a CD quality song is about 3-5 Mb
(about 1 Mb per minute). With this trend starting 2 years ago,
everyone having a computer (a Pentium or above, a fast 486 will
do also), has been getting their favorite music from the
Internet, or putting them on the Internet. Ever wondered why the
Internet is so slow ? Now you know.
Of course, most songs being copyrighted, it's getting harder and
harder to get a MP3 (still plenty to find on the Net though).
With sites up and down with a blink of an eye. There's still a
war going on with the big bosses of record companies trying to
shut down sites, but of course, there's also an advantage for
starting bands to get known very easily. People might even buy
your stuff, just because they heard your stuff on the Net, and
you want to hear more. I predict this will be an unending war
with both sides having valid points.
What to do to listen to MP3 ?
To listen to an MP3 files you have to of course
_have_ an MP3 file. You also need a player. These are very small
programs, and almost all are free to download. For now, the
number 1 player is WinAmp and it can be downloaded at www.winamp.com . From the very first beginning, updates have followed
each other at a fast pace with a lot of improvement over the
years. Now, it supports almost all available audio formats. Why
need any other program if you have this one ?
Other alternatives are too limited and not as innovative as
WinAmp, but you might wanna try them out. Even if I say you don't
need them. So, I won't give you any links either.
How to download MP3's ?
There are two ways to download MP3 files. You
can get it directly of the Web (the easiest way) or you can use
FTP (file transfer protocol) to obtain an MP3.
A good start on the Web is The MP3
Monkey with a bunch of search engines here. Be sure to press the
search button again if the first search doesn't reveal anything.
Also, you should try to get the hang of effictive searching, i.e.
try to limit down the search gradually (add a word) or when it
reveals nothing try to widen your search (remove a word). Some
engines are better than the other, and some don't even take two
words to apply that on it's database. In that case, choose that
one word carefully, and try using another word if it reveals
nothing or too much.
There's also a full
albums section, and if you're lucky,
there maybe something there you like. Be sure to check to links
section too for valuable links. That's the whole point of the
Internet, in case you haven't noticed. {:)
Also try http://huizen.dds.nl/~relaxxx/mp3. Keep in mind some pages don't get updated much, but
you can always try.
A really big site is www.mp3place.com and of course
www.mp3.com (how did you guess ?)
Other usefull link can be found using Hotbot or Yahoo (using keyword like "MP3 top 50 US" or
something like that).
Too lazy to search for the songs you like, and it's in the charts
anyway ? I'll make it easy for ya. Here's the Dutch
Top 40 and the US Billboard
Top 50. Of course, sites like these are
bound to be hunted down by higher powers (record companies and
such), and you'll have to start looking somewhere else pretty
soon.
Using FTP is the also a common way to get MP3's. As you may have
already noticed, most links provided by the search engines give
you FTP addresses. Also, some FTP sites don't give you the MP3
you want for free, and you are only allowed to download it, after
you uploaded an MP3 (preferrable one they don't have yet). To
access FTP sites, get a good FTP program first. Or not, whatever
you like. To gain access, you first have to know the login name
and password, provided by the search engines. It's usually login:
mp3 password: mp3, or login: anonymous password:
user@hostaddress.com. After you're logged in, a welcome message
usually appears, stating if it's totally free (leech) or ratio
(ranging from 1:1 to 1:10, meaning, for every byte you upload,
you can download 10 bytes) site. If you upload, you should put it
in the /upload (or something) dir. After that, you can start
downloading.
Oh, I forgot, there's also a third way to get MP3's. Use your
newsreader (MS Internet Explorer or Netscape or something else),
go to your news server and go to the newsgroup
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3. You can also request a song here. It's
mostly filled with old rare MP3's, but some new ones may be
floating around too.
Still having a hard time ? Just mail me, and ask away.
How to make an MP3 ?
You wanna make your own MP3 ? First you have to
have the original CD (or WAV file, be sure it's 44.1 KHz, stereo,
16-bits). If you have the CD, you have to put a track in WAV
format before it can be encoded to MP3. This is called ripping.
There are several programs to do that job. WinDac and CDCopy are
both well, depending on your CD-ROM. Also depending on you
CD-ROM, ripping will be fast or not. Also, you have to play
around with the options to get the best quality WAV file, without
cracks and blips. After you are sure you have the right options
to make high quality WAV, you can start putting them on your disk
(about 30 to 50 MB, about 10 MB per minute). After that, listen
to the whole WAV to make sure it's alright, and then you can
start encoding them. Use L3ENC or .mp3 Producer to encode it. It
will take about 15 minutes a song (on a Pentium 200 or so). Be
sure the settings are at a bitrate of 128 bps and turn the high
quality switch on. Now you have a tiny small song, ready to be
distributed over the Net (that's why you did it, right ?).
To get the aforementioned programs (WinDac, CDCopy, L3ENC, .mp3
Producer) mail me.