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.