| Just about the hottest thing on the Internet right now is MP3. It's the most popular format for downloaded music and the second-most-popular (after XXX-rated sites) search term on search engines. On that page you'll find everything you need to know in order to download, play and record MP3.
What is MP3?MPEG is an acronym for Motion Pictures Experts Group. It's a set of standards for compressing and storing digital audio and video. MP3 is "MPEG Audio Layer 3", that identifies a way to store digital audio files. MP3 files give you CD-quality sound in a file format that requires roughly 1 MB for every minute of sound (CD files, by contrast, require about 11 MB per minute). This means that a single song in MP3 format usually takes up between 3 and 5 MB, a reasonable download even for slow processor and/or server. Regardless of where a sound come from, you hear always analog sound. Computers can translate and store the information as digital sound only. This is done through sampling - the process of taking snapshots of the sound many times per second. And MP3 files are based on psychoucoustics - the study of how the human brain perceives sound. The science has determined that not all of the sound we hear is perceived by the brain. To create an MP3 file, an MP3 encoder reads a WAV file and then strips out the parts that you won't miss hearing. By whitting away the parts you don't hear, the encoder creates a file that sounds the same but is dramatically smaller.
MP3 Requirements To play MP3 files, you'll need at least a 75-MHz Pentium computer with 16 MB of RAM (to create MP3 files 133-MHz Pentium with 32 MB of RAM), sound card, a CD-ROM drive, and set of speakers or headphones. Remember, that you need also a lot of hard disk space to store MP3 files. The most important piece of MP3 software is player, which decodes an MP3 file and outputs the sound to your sound card. To create your own MP3 files, you'll need a ripper and encoder. The ripper takes a song from the CD and turns it into a WAV file, and the encoder converts the WAV file into an MP3 file. To make CD from your favorite songs, that you download from the Internet in MP3 format, you'll need additionally CD-Writer and decoder, which converts MP3 files into WAV files and therefore into CD format.
Software Downloading You've found MP3 file on the Internet. Now you have to download that file onto your hard drive to play it later. Also all the MP3 software (players, encoders, rippers and decoders) can be found in The Internet Depth. Part of it is freeware - you can download, use and distribute it free of charge, but most it is shareware - you can download it free, but the program will be not fully operational, or fully operational for very short period of time, or both. The easiest way to download something from the Internet is double-clicking on the appropriate link. The disadvantage of that direct downloading is that in case of the connection break during the process you have to begin the downloading from the very beginning. That's why recommend to use the downloading agent. Try these programs:
- NetVampire The best freeware downloading agent
- GetRight One of the most popular shareware downloading agents.
- GetSmart The program can split the large files to the parts and download each part simultaneously.
Opening Archives All the files on the Internet are saved compressed to minimize space and to simplify your downloading. The most frequently used archives with extensions: *.exe, *.zip, *.rar.
- *.EXE The self-opening archive. No need of the special software for decompression.
- *.ZIP The best program for compression and decompression is WinZip .That is shareware, but fully operational and never expires.
- *.RAR Use the program WinRar. That archive is the frequent guest on some European Sites.
MP3 files Online
Probably, you've heard, that in MP3 files there is something illegal. MP3 files aren't illegal because they're MP3 files, but there are many files that violate copyrights and therefore are illegal. If you created an MP3 file of the latest CD and posted it on the net without owner's permission, you'd be guilty of a federal crime: a violation of the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997, or NET, which makes it a felony to create or distribute unauthorized digital music. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a watchdog organization for this kind of abuse. That's why I'll give you information about the sites, distributing only legal staff. The illegal sites you'll find yourself in need (you have plenty of them on the Net).
The most popular MP3 Web site is MP3.com , which gets about a quarter of a million hits a day. Other Web sites worth looking at are the audiodiner, Dimension Music and Songs.com. Besides Web sites, you can also get MP3 files from newsgroups such as alt.binaries.music.mp3, alt.binaries.sounds, and alt.binaries.mp3.zappa. The MP3 files you get from newsgroups are almost always unauthorized. But you can't always tell if a track is legal just by looking at it. So, if you're not going to distribute it, don't worry.  |
Musical Players, Rippers, Encoders The best player for MP3 format is WinAmp. You'll be able to completely customize it, using various plug-ins and skins for that player, spreaded all over the Internet World. And the latest Nullsoft Winamp 2.50e is Freeware. Also can be used freeware Sonique, shareware WPlay or universal MusicMatch Juckbox . Other MP3 players you can download here or here. The best rippers are: AudioGrabber and Easy CD-DA Extractor. Put attention that not all the CD-ROMs capable to perform the digital reading and extracting. The best encoder, that not only can convert WAV files to MP3 format, but also can rip the CD directly to the MP3 format is AudioCatalyst. Generally that program combines the AudioGrabber and encoder stand-alone XingMP3 Encoder.
New Music Formats Two new formats are quickly spreading through Internet: VQF and AAC. VQF format is very similar to MP3, but the compression rate is higher (compare 1:12 for MP3 to 1:18 for VQF). But that format demands the better hardware: the very minimum is Pentium 100, and the music archives on the Web still relatively small. Players for VQF format you can download here and for AAC format here.
|
