mp3's advantages
The advantages of mp3's are obvious - a compressed music format
that offers acceptable listening quality, without occupying an
excessive amount of storage space; a range of easily-available
tools for creating and encoding or 'ripping' mp3's from music
CD's (also tapes, LP's etc...) which can then be burned to CD, saved
on the hard drive, or recorded to tape, minidisc, walkman or
whatever; not to mention the huge internet community that
downloads and exchanges mp3's, despite the copyright issues almost
completely free of charge. What more can I say? In my
opinion, if things stay the way they are (with Napster etc...) the
future of music will most definitely be mp3.
What software do I need ?
If you're only interested in listening to mp3's already stored on your PC,
then a simple player, such as Nullsoft Winamp will provide you with what
you need. This free utility is regularly updated and enables you to
listen to mp3's as well as audio CD's, MOD and WAV files, amongst
others. It allows you to create and store playlists, so you can
recall collections of tracks at a later date and in addition it will play
streamed audio from Internet radio stations.
Extending my collection
However if you want to extend your own
collection, then ripping and encoding tracks from your audio CD's is
one of the easiest ways to do this. There's a huge number of
rippers available for download from the web, either as commercial
products like AudioCatalyst or shareware such as MusicMatch Jukebox.
Ripping tracks from CD's is one way of
obtaining mp3 files, but limits you to the songs that you already
have. If you want to take full advantage of the internet's mp3
resources, there is a number of tools to help you find specific songs
or distribute your own materials. apster is a free product (my
favourite) which provides you with access to the mp3 libraries of
other Napster users via the internet. You can search for a track
accross all of Napster's users' hard disks and specify details such as
minimum line speed for downloading the tracks to your own drive...
excellent :-)
The potential
Recording mp3 to tape has limited potential, but
it's still good. Recording mp3 to CD also has limited potential,
as you have to first convert the mp3 file to a wav file, in order to
be able to play them on conventional CD players, also only about 20
tracks (same as normal CD's) can be stored on each CD and once wrote
to the CD cannot be rerecorded over.
However for swapping CD's between computers (you
can store around 170 tracks - which is brilliant!) ... well in my
opinion the potential is enormous. Also new personal stereo's
are supposed to be coming out soon with Hard drive storage of about 5
GB, compared to a CD which is about 650MB. Modern personal
stereos have just been released, or are just about to be released,
which can play mp3 files, as well as wav files.
I have also been looking into recording mp3's to
minidisc and I can verify that it works and that it is actually not as difficult
as I though it would be (no encoding/conversion needed). All
that you need to do is wire your computer up to your Hi-Fi, play the
.mp3 file via your computer and record the outputted .wav file sound
via your Minidisc player/recorder, if this bit sounds simple to
set-up... it isn't, but don't worry it isn't all that complicated, if
you're unsure what I mean you'll need help. E-mail
me if you wish and I'll do my best to help you out.
More help
A search through specialist shareware
collections such as www.mp3.com , or
general sites such as www.zdnet.co.uk/software
should help you get the most out of this new format. It really
is excellent and I advice you if you haven't already got it, get it
now. If you need any help in understanding it, or have any
questions about it, simply e-mail me
and I'll try and help you, if I can. Another great site to ask for computer
help or computer repair
is Goovibe IT.
Useful mp3 links:
Nullsoft Winamp www.winamp.com
Nullsoft Shoutcast www.shoutcast.com
AudioCatalyst www.xingtech.com
MusicMatch Jukebox www.musicmatch.com
Napster www.napster.com
Beam-it www.my.mp3.com
also: www.peoplesound.com
www.audiofind.com
GET QUOTE