This page contains a bunch of Frequently Asked Questions about the MP3 music compression format and related topics, and some basic answers to them.
A couple of disclaimers... This is not an "official" FAQ of any kind. And I am not an MP3 "expert". I work in software support, I fool around with MP3 quite a bit and take part in discussions about it, and I've been fiddling with computer music in one form or another since we used to send signals to the tape drives to make a tune by causing them to hum at different frequencies. Boy, have we come a long way! So anyway... what I'm trying to say is that I'm more or less just an unqualified mumbler. But since I found I kept answering the same questions about MP3 quite often, I decided I might as well try and keep the answers in one place. And once I tried to put the answers in one place, I decided I might as well put them up on the web. BTW, did I mention that I'm just a little bit obsessive / compulsive? ;-}
Enough introductory whiffle! I've finally reorganized the FAQ a bit to try to make things easier to find - more fixing up to come soon if I can find time (tightening up answers, removing duplicate information, and adding a Glossary, hopefully). Check out the list of main Sections below, and click on the name of the section you want to go to, then browse the questions, and click on the question you're interested in to go to the answer, such as it is. Or use your browser's find function (usually Ctrl-F) to search for a word or phrase you're interested in.
Obviously I've included facts and references here that I've picked up from various people, especially the participants in the usenet group alt.music.mp3 - my thanks to all those people... but of course any errors found here and the limitations of the answers are entirely my responsibility.
If you think an answer should be changed, or you have an additional question you'd like answered please feel free to email me at xorys@idirect.ca. Fair warning though - I get quite a bit of email, so I may not always be as prompt as I'd like to be about responding to or acting on messages sent to me.
Have fun!
Sections
Click on the name of a SECTION to go to the questions for that section.
1) Rip them yourself. You can create MP3 files from any recorded music you have. Programs such
as Musicmatch Jukebox will rip tracks from audio CDs straight to MP3. I used to find
Musicmatch's MP3 encoder less than great, so I used it to extract music from CDs, but I set
it to extract to WAV files, and then used BladeEnc (a free program) to encode the WAV files to
MP3. Subsequently I switched to using an excellent free program for ripping from CDs which
includes the Blade and LAME encoders... this is CDEX, which you can download from:
More recently, Musicmatch changed the encoder it uses to create MP3 files to one from
Fraunhofer, so I actually switched back to using Musicmatch to rip directly to MP3. But
you still had to pay to register Musicmatch in order to be able to encode at useful bitrates. Even more recently, Musicmatch changed their policies again - you can now download free a version of Musicmatch which will allow you to encode at all bitrates up to 320 kbps - and this version also includes functionality for burning audio CDs as well!
CDEX is still a very functional free alternative.
You can also record from tapes or vinyl albums, but it requires a little more ingenuity. For
tapes, you can connect the earphone socket of a walkman to the line-in of your sound card, and
then use a program such as Goldwave (www.goldwave.com) to
record to WAV files. For vinyl you need to take an audio line-out from somewhere in your stereo
set up and run it into your sound card... running a turntable directly into your sound card
generally won't work, since the level is wrong and the frequency distribution is distorted (this
being normally corrected by the pre-amp circuits of an amplifier / receiver designed to accept
magnetic phono input). You will then need to use an encoder to convert the WAV files to MP3 -
again you can use CDEX, employing the WAV to MP3 option.
2) Downloading from web pages. There *is* lots of MP3 on the web.... but... there are also a lot
of dead links. The most reliable MP3 on the web is stuff like www.mp3.com which is all straight-up fully legal MP3 authorised by
the content providers. There's lots of good music there, but it takes time to find stuff you
like, since you'll never have heard of most of the artists. There are search engines to help you
find stuff. You can use regular search engines such as Altavista, hotbot etc. There are also
special search engines such as www.audiovalley.com, www.scour.net etc. These will find some web posts, but the
majority of what they find will probably be FTP (see below).
3) FTP. File Transfer Protocol. It's just another way of transfering files over the net. If
files on an FTP site are freely downloadable without restrictions, you should be able to
download them through you browser. But most FTP sites are "ratio" sites, meaning they
won't let you download unless you first upload something. The "ratio" part refers to
the ratio between how much you upload and how much you download - a 1:5 site ratio means you
must upload 1 Mb for every 5 Mb you want to download. To use a ratio site you will have to work
with an FTP client, i.e. a program specifically designed for doing FTP, such as Cute FTP, WS
FTP. There programs allow you define FTP sites in a directory, along with the logins and
passwords for them - when you get an FTP link from the web, it will look something like
"ftp://mp3:grab@123.45.67.8/mp3z/thisfile.mp3" - in this link "123.45.67.8"
is the address of the FTP site (this is an actual IP address - you way also see a textual
address, such as joes.mp3.ftp), "mp3" is the logon id, "grab" is the
password, the file name is "thisfile.mp3" and it is in directory "mp3z" on
the FTP server... to put this into an FTP program, you'd specify 123.45.67.8 as the site
address, "mp3" as the logon, "grab" as the password... then you'd hit the
"Connect" button, and once you'd logged on, you'd change directory to "mp3z"
to look for your file. Unfortunately, there are rather a lot of complications. Many FTP sites
are only up at certain hours of the day (their owners use the computers for other things the
rest of the time). When the sites *are* up, you often can't get in because they're too busy -
most of these sites are just on desktop PCs, and to function they need to restrict the number of
simultaneous logins to something like 3 or 4. If you get a "can't connect to site
message" try at another time. If you get a "too many logins" message, just keep
trying (it's kind of like a phone busy signal). Even once you get in, satisfying site owners'
ratio requirements can be tricky - they may only want certain types of file, that you don't
have. Really you almost need to establish a trading relationship with certain site owners to
make this work.
NOTE: For downloading from the web, or from FTP sites that are *not* ratio sites, I would highly
recommend getting a download manager program. The two main ones are Go!zilla and Getright. I use
the free version of Go!zilla myself, and I'm pleased with it. These programs will intercept when
you click on a download (http or ftp) link in your browser, and manage the download for you...
they do it much better than browsers, which were not mainly designed for downloading large
files... they can schedule downloads to take place while you're sleeping, and they will
automatically restart interrupted downloads, resuming where they left off (if the host site
supports download resumption, as most sites now do). You can obtain such software through the
ZDNet software library (PC Magazine's free download zone) at www.hotfiles.com - you can also find FTP client software, MP3
encoders and pretty much anything else you might need through ZDNet.
4) Real time chat trading. You can trade MP3 files with others using the file transfer features
of chat functions such as ICQ or IRC. I'm told that IRC in particular is a rich source for MP3
files. I haven't really done this myself. Since you're using icqmail, I guess you already have
ICQ, so you probably know more about it than me. To use IRC, you'll need an IRC program - MIRC
is probably the best known. Again you can find IRC software through ZDNet. I can't give you
detailed advice on this, because I haven't done it... but you could try asking on IRC itself
(which is principally a chat medium) or on the mp3 discussion newsgroup.
5) The MP3 newsgroups. I've probably obtained more MP3 music this way than any other. There are
many MP3 newsgroups - just search the group list downloaded in your newsreader for
"mp3". The single biggest one is alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 - warning: it's *huge* - if
you have access to a decent newsserver just downloading the headers for alt.binaries.sounds.mp3
will take a while and involve something like 5 Mbs of data (and that's just for the headers). I
don't know what you use for news reading. I'd highly recommend getting a proper newsreader,
rather than trying to use your browser. Personally I use Agent from Fort‚ software. I guess it's
possible to get ok results with Microsoft Outlook Express, but I couldn't say how exactly, since
I haven't worked with it much. There are also special programs specifically designed for
retrieving binaries from newsgroups... I was experimenting with one called NewsShark recently
(free - got it from ZDNet), and it did a reasonable job. Actually I've gone back to using Agent
myself... but NewsShark is free and Agent isn't... and you could do worse than trying NewsShark,
especially to experiment and see if you find music you like. MP3 files posted in newsgroups are
posted in many "parts", which means an individual file will be split over anywhere
from 5 individual messages to 200 or more. Programs such as NewsShark and Agent will join the
parts together automatically for you (most of the time at least - a few weird posts sometimes
don't get joined). With Outlook Express, I believe you have to sort the posts by subject then
select all the parts belonging to a given file (you can tell from the header subjects - they'll
be something like "Blue suede shoes - 1/12" "Blue suede shoes - 2/12" etc...
meaning part 1 of 12, part 2 of 12), then right click on them and select something like
"Join parts and decode" from the pop-out menu.
6) Napster is a new, web-based MP3 trading systems. I have some security concerns about it,
since it is new, and involves allowing access to your hard drive initiated by third parties. You
can find out more about it at www.napster.com or www.macster.com for the Mac version.
Forget Netscape for this. There are various programs you can use. Fort‚ Agent is a good
dedicated newsreader. Even Microsoft Outlook Express will do a reasonable job of joining and
decoding posts. There are also programs designed specifically for retrieving binaries. I've been
experimenting with a program called "NewsShark" recently. It's free - you can download
it through ZDNet (www.hotfiles.com). It's a bit buggy
(sometimes crashes when you exit it, for example), and rather clunky - it takes a *long* time to
start up and shut down once you've loaded a bunch of headers into it. But it does join binaries
fine, and it has at least one advantage over Agent (or at least, the version of Agent that I
have) - if it's downloading a large binary and the newsserver kicks it off or locks up on it, it
will automatically restart the download, keeping the portion of the binary that it has already
downloaded... this can be quite a time saver when you're trying to retrieve large files.
***
You have to download all the parts. The parts should have a number somewhere in the header like
"Moon River 12/25" - this means that this particular message is part 12 or 25 parts.
If you're not using a newsreader that automatically joins parts (try Free Agent - download it
from ZDNet - www.hotfiles.com - for example), then it's a
good idea to sort the newsgroup by subject, so all the parts come together. Check that all the
parts are present - if some are missing (e.g. it says /25 but only 22 parts are actually there),
then basically you can't download and decode that song. If all the parts are present, you'll
need to retrieve them all, combine them, and decode the result. Free Agent will join the parts
and decode automatically, most of the time, so you just need to retrieve the joined message...
occasionally it won't recognise the way the headers are formatted and you'll have to join the
parts manually - by selecting them all, right clicking, and choosing "Join" from the
menu. Outlook Express won't join automatically, but you can join by selecting all the posts,
right clicking, and choosing "Combine and decode". Always make sure you have arranged
all the parts in the right order by number before OKing the join operation. Netscape won't join
posts at all, so you'd just have to save the posts to a text file in order and then decode it
with an external UUdecoder program - you might as well just switch to a real newsreader program.
Check out the FAQ for the MP3 binary groups at:
I don't know which the best is really - it depends what you're looking for and changes from day
to day. But www.audiovalley.com provides access to most
of the major engines all from a single page, so it's a good place to start. Actually I find
kermit, audiofind and lycos are about the most likely to find useful results. Also sometimes
just searching in general search engines such as Altavista and Hotbot finds stuff that the
specialised engines don't.
If you go to www.audiovalley.com you can access pretty
much all the main search engines from a single page. Kermit, Lycos and Scour seem to produce the
most results, usually...
If files on an FTP site are freely downloadable without restrictions, you should be able to
download them through you browser. But most FTP sites are "ratio" sites, meaning they
won't let you download unless you first upload something. The "ratio" part refers to
the ratio between how much you upload and how much you download - a 1:5 site ratio means you
must upload 1 Mb for every 5 Mb you want to download. To use a ratio site you will have to work
with an FTP client, i.e. a program specifically designed for doing FTP, such as Cute FTP, WS
FTP. Programs such as Getright and Go!zilla are useless for ratio sites, since they can't do the
upload part. Actuall FTP client programs allow you to define FTP sites in a directory, along
with the logins and passwords for them - when you get an FTP link from the web, it will look
something like "ftp://mp3:grab@123.45.67.8/mp3z/thisfile.mp3" - in this link
"123.45.67.8" is the address of the FTP site (this is an actual IP address - you way
also see a textual address, such as joes.mp3.ftp), "mp3" is the logon id,
"grab" is the password, the file name is "thisfile.mp3" and it is in
directory "mp3z" on the FTP server... to put this into an FTP program, you'd specify
123.45.67.8 as the site address, "mp3" as the logon, "grab" as the
password... then you'd hit the "Connect" button, and once you'd logged on, you'd
change directory to "mp3z" to look for your file. Unfortunately, there are rather a
lot of complications. Many FTP sites are only up at certain hours of the day (their owners use
the computers for other things the rest of the time). When the sites *are* up, you often can't
get in because they're too busy - most of these sites are just on desktop PCs, and to function
they need to restrict the number of simultaneous logins to something like 3 or 4. If you get a
"can't connect to site message" try at another time. If you get a "too many
logins" message, just keep trying (it's kind of like a phone busy signal - many programs
will retry automatically for you... see the setup options). Even once you get in, satisfying
site owners' ratio requirements can be tricky - they may only want certain types of file, that
you don't have. Really you almost need to establish a trading relationship with certain site
owners to make this work.
You can always try just clicking on the link as it is presented in your browser from the search
engine... this might just work. However, it often won't work, for a number of reasons. One very
common reason is that most ftp sites are "ratio" sites, which means you have to upload
something before you can download something... a ratio site will have a ratio such as 1:5, which
means, basically, that you can download 5 Mb for every 1 mb you upload. To use a ratio site you
will probably want to install an ftp client (such as CuteFTP or WS-FTP) on your PC, if you don't
already have one (although you *can* do it with your browser), and you will need some MP3 files
of your own to upload. If you want to go ahead and try this, install your ftp client, then, if
you have a link like:
for example, specify 142.169.87.11 as the address of the ftp site, and mp34u as the login id and
mp3 as the password. 21 is the port number, but 21 is the default ftp port, so you probably
won't need to specify this. Then you have to try to connect to the ftp site. Many ftp sites
don't operate 24 hours a day seven days a week, so if the site is unavailable, or if it's too
busy, try logging in again at another time. If you succeed in logging in, you can try to find
and download the file you want - using an ftp site is pretty similar to browsing through
directories on your hard disk. If you try to download the file and get a message like
"insufficient credit" or just "permission denied" then probably you need to
upload first... there will usually be a directory called "uploads" or something
similar into which you should transfer the song you are uploading.
To use your browser type:
ftp://mp34u:mp3@142.169.87.11:21
into the "Location" input box and press enter. There may be some kind of welcome
information message on the main directory page, which will give you more info. To upload, you
generally should change to the upload directory (look for a link with the word
"upload" in it on the main directory page and click on it)... once your browser is
showing the upload directory page, just drag and drop an MP3 file into your browser, and you
should be prompted as to whether you want to upload it. Downloading is simpler - just click on
the directory links to move from directory to directory, (in the example above the song
"thningummy.mp3" would be in the directory "songs" found in the main
directory) and when you see the link for the song you want, just click on it to download... but
as mentioned above, for most sites you'll have to upload first.
It's a bit of an uphill struggle sometimes. Good luck!
You either put this info into an FTP client such as WS-FTP or CuteFTP... in which case you'd
enter "24.30.138.13" as the server name/address, "mp3" as the logon id, and
"mp3" as the password; you wouldn't need to enter the port since 21 is the default FTP
port; then you connect to the site (press the "Connect" button), and if you succeed in
connecting (you probably won't, since the site will often be offline or busy), then you have to
upload (that is transfer from your machine *to* the FTP site) 1 MB of song data for every 3 Mb
you want to download. Uploads should normally be put into a directory with "Upload" in
its name. There will often be a text file in the main directory or in the upload directory
specifying what you are expected to upload and other stuff about the site.
You can access such sites using your browser (Netscape or IE). To use the above site, you would
enter:
ftp://mp3:mp3@24.30.138.13:21
into the Location box in your browser, and then press enter. This will try to log you on, and if
it succeeds you will see the contents of the main directory displayed with sub-directories
displayed as folders and files displayed as text links. To change to a subdirectory just click
on the folder. To upload, change to the upload directory then drag and drop a file from a
Windows Explorer or My Computer window into the browser window. To download, just click on the
link for the file you want.
You can access FTP sites with your browser. If you type into the URL box in your browser the
following:
ftp://userid:password@server.name/directory:port
where:
"userid" is the user logon id
"password" is the password
"server name" is the URL name of the server (may also be an IP number, eg
123.12.34.123)
"directory" is the directory path to access on the server
"port" is the port number to use (may be omitted if the default port of 21 is to be
used)
this will log you on to the FTP server and display the contents of the directory (so long as a
login is possible - FTP servers are often unavailable or impossible to log on to because maximum
users are already logged on). You can download files by clicking on the file name in the
directory. You can upload files by dragging them from a "windows explorer" or "my
computer" window and dropping them into the browser window (with Netscape or IE anyway - I
don't know about other browsers). Generally you should change to a directory with the word
"upload" in its name before attempting to upload.
Probably what is happening is that you are simply clicking on the links to the MP3 files and you
have a plugin installed for your browser which is capable of playing MP3... so your browser
assumes you simply want to play the files, not to save them - so it downloads them to a
temporary area under a temporary name (called Temporary Internet Files for IE or disk cache for
Netscape). If you want to download the file permanently and keep them, try right clicking on the
links and selecting "Save as" - then chose the directory you want to save in. Do *not*
save in the Temporary Internet Files or Netscape cache directories, as files in these
directories *will* be automatically deleted. You might also want to try downloading a program
such as Go!zilla (available for www.hotfiles.com for
example) - this program will intercept links to downloadable files from your browser and help
you to schedule and manage downloads better than your browser can...
If you're winding up with an .htm extension, you're probably not dealing with links that point
directly to MP3 files. I've never heard of *anyone* storing MP3 files with an htm extension
(although they do use some strange extensions sometimes), and I doubt they would, as it would
almost certainly result in improper downloads. "htm" is a standard extension for
HyperText Markup Language files, i.e. basic web pages. Probably either the link is pointing you
to another web page which will in turn pass you to the MP3 file, or the creator of the link if
just trying to trick you into visiting some web page, or the MP3 files has been removed and the
htm file you are getting is some kind of warning or notification from the server telling you
that the file is not available.
I think "extended information" is mostly just IE's way of telling you that it got a
response that it isn't equipped to deal with. There are all sorts of other reasons an attempt to
access an FTP site might fail - most commonly the site is busy so that login is denied, the
login / password in the link are no longer valid, or the site has converted to browse only or
ratio. If you're sure that you're dealing with non ratio sites I'd recommend using a download
manager. The two best known ones are Go!zilla and Getright. You can download a free version of
Go!zilla (it displays banners) from the ZDNet software library at www.hotfiles.com (search for "Go!zilla" or
"download manager"). A download manager will show you clearer messages, retry
automatically for you, allow you to schedule downloads for later, and resume downloads if they
are interrupted. For ratio sites, I'd recommend using a real FTP client (also available from
ZDNet), although it is possible to use your browser to work with ratio sites.
Well Napster doesn't really deal in 'links' at all in the conventional sense. It basically
allows the people using it to access files on each other's hard drives. So you can get files
which are on other Napster users' drives, and meanwhile other people can be getting files from
your hard drive. You tell Napster which directories it is allowed to use. In some ways it's a
good idea, but I worry a bit about the security implications of encouraging unknown third
parties on the net to come in and access my hard drive without my having any detailed knowledge
of or control over what they are doing (so I haven't personally used Napster - I'm just going by
what I've been told about it, essentially, and what their own website says).
Well that's certainly the *theory*. But how sure can anyone be sure that it's totally true?
Certainly programs running on your computer *can* allow outside parties to do all sorts of
things on your machine via a web connection... look at the Back Orifice software, for example,
which worked exactly this way. So it's basically a question of whether you completely trust
Napster:
a) not to have sneakily included any functionality into their software beyond that declared,
and
b) not to have inadvertently left the potential in their software for exploitation by cunning
hackers for functions beyond those intended.
Call me paranoid, but that's stretching the limits of my trust, so I haven't given Napster a try
yet. When you run Napster, you *are* allowing file access tasks on your computer to be initiated
by a third party through your web connection... and you have to *trust* that those file access
activities *cannot* exceed read-only access to the files and directories you have specified.
If the binaries newsgroups don't appear on your server's list of groups, then this presumably
means that your server doesn't carry them. Some don't, because they take up *lots* of space, and
use tons of bandwidth. This basically means that you'll have to get another server. Either sign
up with an ISP which provides a decent newsserver including binaries (I can't really recommend
one in the UK - you'll need to ask around locally), or subscribe to a dedicated news service...
there are quite a number of these, and they usually charge something around $10 US a month I
gather. Newsguy is one that a lot of people use... but if you search for "news server"
or "usenet server" or "usenet access" in any popular search engine you
should come up with a bunch.
Basically no. You really need to switch to a different program for newsreading. Netscape is
simply incapable of combining and decoding attachments spread over multiple messages. The *only*
way you could do it might be to force Netscape to save all the parts as text files, then edit
them together in the right order into one big text file, and then decode it using a stand-alone
uu-decoder.
But honestly, it's really pointless. Just use a newsreader that can combine and decode messages
properly. Personally I'd recommend downloading Free Agent, the freeware 'lite' version of
Fort‚'s Agent newsreader. It will certainly be a lot better for you than Netscape. Myself I use
Agent, the "full" version... but Free Agent is pretty good. Microsoft Outlook Express
will also allow you to combine and decode messages, although unlike Agent, it doesn't combine
the messages automatically - you have to select all the parts, and then right-click and choose
"Combine and decode". There are also programs designed specifically just for
retrieving binary files from newsgroups. NewsShark is one - it's free, and it does work,
although it's a little clunky (slow to start up and shut down, and sometimes when you go to shut
it down it crashes - but other than that it works pretty well... and it can restart interrupted
downloads, which is a good feature).
Netscape is pretty useless in that department. The only way you can do it is to save all the
parts in the right order into a file on your hard disk, and then convert them with a separate
program which can read UU encoded data and decode it.
I'd seriously suggest, if you have much interest in doing this sort of thing, that you switch to
a real Newsreader program. You can download Free Agent, the free "lite" version of
Fort‚'s Agent Newsreader from most shareware / freeware sites (e.g. www.hotfiles.com) and it will do a much better job for you
than Netscape. Heck, even Outlook Express will do a better job than Netscape on this front.
I suggest that you check out the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the MP3 Binary Groups at
www.mp3-faq.org
You select multiple files in Outlook Express the same way you select multiple files anywhere
else in Windows:
* Click on one file to start.
* Either hold down the Control key and click on additional files (if you select one you don't
want by accident, you can remove it from your selection by clicking on it again, still holding
down the Control key).
* Alternatively hold down the Shift key and click on another file - all the files between the
first file you clicked and the second one will be selected. This works well for combining MP3
parts. First sort the headers by name... this should make the parts that belong to a single song
all come together in order - then just click on the first part, hold down the Shift key, and
click on the last part... and they should all be selected.
Then right click anywhere on the selection, and pick "Combine and decode" from the
menu that pops up.
* Sort the messages in the group by name, so all the parts of a song come together.
* Select all of the parts of the song (click on them one by one whilst holding down the Ctrl
key, or click on the first one then hold down the shift key and click on the last one, or
whatever...)
* Right click anywhere on the selected parts, and from the menu that pops up chose "Combine
and decode"
If you just want the songs to merge together somewhat, with a new song coming up as the old one
fades away, you can use the Nullsoft Cross-Fader Plugin, which you can download from www.winamp.com under Plugins / Effects. You'll probably need to
get the new version of Winamp also - but that's alright, it's free now. And BTW, when you
download and install the Cross-Fading Plugin, oddly enough the cross-fading effect seems to be
turned off at first - go to Preferences (Ctrl-P), select Output, and then select the Cross Fader
Plugin, then press the Configure button... now check the "No gaps on stop or next" box
to activate the cross-fading effect. BTW, I find the cross-fading plugin is just generally a
better output plugin than the default Wave Out plugin, even if you don't want the cross-fading
effect... it manages priorities better, and plays under load without stuttering better, and it
gives you more control over the playing parameters (buffer size, read ahead, block-size can all
be set manually).
Now if you're a purest DJ type and you actually want the beats of the songs synchronised, well
the cross-fading plugin won't do that. There is a program called Virtual Turntables, from a
company called Carrot, that will allow you to do actual DJ type effects going from one MP3 song
to another... but it's essentially for DJing type uses, and requires manual control. Also it's
not free, although I think there is a trial version...
***
Virtual Turntables from Carrot Software seems to do pretty much what you're asking for. Their
web site is at:
There is also a Winamp plugin available free from www.winamp.com which blends each song into the next on a
playlist (it doesn't match beats or anything through). It's called the Nullsoft Cross Fading
Plugin (experimental), and I believe you'll find it under Plugins / Effects. BTW, oddly enough
the "cross fading" effect is disabled when you install the plugin - select it as your
output plugin, press the Configure button, and check the box for "No gaps on stop or
next" to enable cross fading.
Another program that I haven't actually tried is Visiosonic's PCDJ at (available from www.mp3masterlist.com/sw/). It's supposedly an MP3
player which also let's you "mix two tracks like a DJ".
Yeah, I have both the computers I regularly use connected to stereo systems by cables - I just
bought cables from Radio Shack, with a stereo 1/8" plug on one end and two RCA jacks on the
other, and I plug the cable into the "line-out" of my audio card and the "aux-in" of my equalizer / mixer. It works fine. I did look into finding some sort of wireless
solution for one of the machines, since it wasn't convenient to have it really close to the
stereo, but the cheapest wireless devices were around $200, and that seemed a bit much, so I
just got a longer cable... it seems to work without a problem - I don't hear any interference or
anything.
I've got 24 ft. of cable between my living room machine and the stereo, and it seems to work
without a problem - the sound quality is pretty close to playing regular CDs on the stereo, so
long as the bit-rate of the MP3s is adequate. I did use shielded extension cable though, not
just speaker wires with RCA jacks on the end.
Well it may be that you have MP3 files that are "cooked"... that is at some point they
have been transferred using an incorrect MIME type and essentially processed as ASCII text files
rather than binaries. There is a simple solution to this - get a program called
"uncook.exe" or "uncook95.exe" (Win 95 version), and it will fix these files
up. You can find the uncook utility through the ZDNet site - www.hotfiles.com - just search for "MP3 fix" and it
should pop right up. Lot's of MP3 sites also have the program available for download.
Ah well... if you're getting the "underwater treble" effect, then quite probably the
file you're trying to play is "cooked"... meaning that it got messed up by being
treated as an ASCII text file during a file transfer. You need a program to "uncook"
it. You can download uncook95.exe via the ZDNet software library (go to www.hotfiles.com and search for "uncook" or
"MP3 fix"). Very likely, once you process your file with this program, it will sound
ok. Sometimes, however, MP3 files get irretrievably messed up during bad transfers. Don't give
up just because one file doesn't play properly!
Well... I do play my MP3 files through my stereo systems, both in my office and in the living
room. But what I'm doing is not really "hi-fi". Well... it probably sounds better than
what was considered "hi-fi" in my youth, but it wouldn't come anywhere near to meeting
current "audiophile" standards, which is what I get the impression you are aiming for.
We had a lengthy discussion about this in this group just recently. For me, the results I get by
just using a shielded audio cable to connect the line-out of my sound card to an aux input on my
stereo are perfectly satisfactory. But I don't have "audiophile ears" and my standards
are not enormously exacting. As other posters in the original thread pointed out at length and
in detail, there are various reasons why playing MP3 from a regular computer is unlikely to meet
"audiophile" standards - apart from the possible quality limitations of the MP3 files
themselves, a PC soundcard is unlikely to produce audio of the requisite quality. If you have a
*really* good soundcard then maybe... but there's still the problem of isolating it from other
components in your PC so no electronic noise intrudes. As I say, I get results which I am quite
comfortable with myself, but if you're looking for "total audiophile hi-fi" I think
you may be disappointed. How good does your soundcard sound to you when you plug earphones
directly into it? That's a good guideline as to what you might expect, I would think...
Yes, this should work fine, so long as your system is fairly powerful / not too overloaded. My
living room system is a Pentium II and I never had a problem with that. The office system is an
older Pentium 120 which I can't be bothered to upgrade at the moment. At first I had problems
playing from the CD ROM on that - I kept getting skips in the playback. However I changed the
Windows config to user the newer, faster hard drive in the machine for virtual memory, rather
than the slower, original drive, and that seems to have fixed the problem, so long as I don't
fire up something that really grabs all the resources.
Uncook95 doesn't remove "pops" from MP3 files in any general sense. It does one, very
specific task, which is to fix MP3 files that have been messed up ("cooked") by being
transferred as if they were text files rather than continuous binary data. Files which have this
problem can have problems ranging from periodic cracks, wibbles or pops to sounding totally
scrambled, playing at the wrong speed etc. If the problem with the file is that it is
"cooked" uncook95 will fix it. But if the problem is something different (e.g. the
file was recorded from an old vinyl LP that was scratched) uncook95 will do nothing for it at
all.
Just click on the "+file" button and hold down your mouse button - you'll see that two
other buttons appear above it labelled "+dir" and "+url". Slide the mouse
cursor up to the "+dir" button whilst holding down the mouse button and then release
the mouse button. A selector window will come up - navigate through it until you find the
directory with all your MP3 files in it. If you want to put *all* your files in all the sub-directories into one playlist, then make sure the "Recurse sub-directories" check-box
in the selector window is checked, then select you directory - all the files in that directory
and in all the directories underneath it will be added to your playlist.
If your playlist isn't already displayed, click the "PL" button to display it. Then on
the Playlist window either click the +FILE button and add the files one at a time or click the
+DIR button (click +FILE and then slide up) to add a whole directory (and optionally its
subdirectories) at a time. To start a new list, click the Load List button, and slide up to New
List.
Err... in the main window is the little green light in the "Shuffle" button on (change
Skin to if you're having trouble finding the Shuffle button)? If so, click it to turn off
Shuffle mode, then the list should play in order. Shuffle mode plays the list in a random
order.
There may be various causes, and some may be difficult to get around (e.g. some video drivers
conflict with audio output in some circumstances, as do some modem operations, and these
problems may be hard to fix, other than by updating your device drivers). Here are a few
suggestions...
1) Turn off stuff in Winamp that's unnecessary, such as the scrolling title display and the
graphic frequency analyser. (Right click on the corresponding part of the Winamp window to
control these options...)
2) Get rid of any programs in memory that you don't need. Use Ctl-Alt-Del and then "End
task" anything that shouldn't be there. Don't kill Explorer or Systray, or anything you're
currently actually using.
3) If you have more than one hard disk, make sure your using the fastest one for Windows virtual
memory - this can make a *lot* of difference. Windows will default to using the c: drive
usually, but if you've installed a second hard drive later it will probably be faster, and using
it for your virtual memory instead will give you better performance. Go to Control Panel /
System and select the Performance tab, then press the Virtual Memory button, and do Manual
Configuration.
4) Go to www.winamp.com and download the Nullsoft Cross-fading Plugin (Experimental). I believe it can be found under both "Best plugins" and
"Output plugins". Despite its name, crossfading (bringing a new song up as the
previous one dies away, rather than having a gap in between) is only one feature of this plugin
(and oddly enough, despite the name, the cross-fading feature is turned off by default). It
seems to do a bet job of managing output than the standard Nullsoft Wave Out plugin, and it
gives you more control - if you select it as your Output plugin under Preferences and then press
the Configure button, it allows you to set the buffer size, the thread priority, the pre-buffering percentage and the block-size. Actually the default values seem to work well... but if
you still have skipping problems, tinkering with these parameters should help. Also, if you
actually want the cross-fading feature (which I kind of like myself - it fades from song to song
on the playlist rather as a radio station would in a song set), turn it on by checking the
"No gaps on stop or next" box in the configuration window.
Actually, come to think of it, I'd probably do these steps in the reverse order I've listed
them, more or less. Try the new plugin first - it may solve your problems. The virtual memory
things is definitely worth doing anyhow if you have a faster hard drive, since it will improve
your overall system performance.
Winamp will skip at times on the best of machines, especially when a dialup network connection
is established, for example. But if skipping occurs more frequently, the problem is probably
caused by one of two things:
a) Your PC is too weak to really handle playing MP3 whilst doing other things - that is the CPU
is too slow, there is not enough memory, and / or the disk I/O is too slow... or:
b) Some other driver on your machine, most likely your video driver, is hogging the bus, and
interfering with your MP3 player.
If the problem is case b, then MP3 will probably play ok if you do nothing, but will break up as
soon as you start moving your mouse, scrolling, etc. About the only solution for this is to
either fiddle with the settings in your video driver or to use a different video driver (either
download a new one from the vendor of your video card, or use one of the Windows generic ones,
which will reduce your video performance but probably fix your MP3 problem).
If the problem is case a, then you'll have to somehow increase Winamp's priority, reduce
Winamp's requirements, reduce the load on your machine, or upgrade the machine. Here are some
suggestions for dealing with case a:
1) Increase Winamp's execution priorities and buffering. Start Winamp and go to Preferences
(Ctrl-P). Select Options at the left, then increase Winamp's overall process priority by moving
the slider at the bottom towards the right, setting it to "High" or "Realtime". Still in Winamp
Preferences, select Output on the left then press the Configure button - you should see sliders
that will allow you to increase both the priority and the buffering of the output plugin. Now,
still in Preferences, select Input on the left, and select Nullsoft MPEG Audio Decoder on the
right, then press the Configure button - set the priority using the slider on the General tab
(this should normally be set to "Highest").
2) Turn off stuff in Winamp that's unnecessary, such as the scrolling title display and the
graphic frequency analyser. Go to the Mainmenu (click in top left corner) / Visualization /
Visualization Mode and select "Off" - this will turn off the scope / analyzer display in the
Winamp window, which will save some CPU. Also right click on the song title on the main menu
and uncheck "Autoscroll song title" in the pop-up menu - this will also save a bit of CPU, and
every little helps.
3) Get rid of any programs in memory that you don't need. Use Ctl-Alt-Del and then "End task"
anything that shouldn't be there. Don't kill Explorer or Systray, or anything you're currently
actually using.
4) If you have more than one hard disk, make sure your using the fastest one for Windows virtual
memory - this can make a *lot* of difference. Windows will default to using the C: drive
usually, but if you've installed a second hard drive later it will probably be faster, and using
it for your virtual memory instead will give you better performance. Go to Control Panel /
System and select the Performance tab, then press the Virtual Memory button, and do Manual
Configuration.
5) If you try all of the above, and Winamp *still* won't play MP3 without skipping on your
machine, then your machine is probably too weak to play MP3 at full quality, and you will have
to reduce the playback quality in order to get it to play without skipping. Go to Preferences
(Ctrl-P) and select Input in the left window and then select Nullsoft MPEG Audio Decoder in the
right window and press the Configure button. Try changing "Decoder Mode" (on the Decoder tab) to
486, K5, non-MMX instead of Pentium or Pentium Pro. Also try setting the Quality to Half or
Quarter. If you set enough of these options down, Winamp will certainly play MP3 fine even on a
weak machine. OTOH setting the options down *will* decrease the quality of the sound, so the
trick is not to reduce more than you have to.
1) Don't use the Nullsoft DirectSound plugin for output - this creates a lower output volume
(check using Ctrl-P for Preferences, then select Output in the left window and see what plugin
is selected for output in the right window).
2) Check, obviously, what volume you are using. Do you have Winamp's own volume control enabled?
(This is controlled by selecting the output plugin and then pressing the Configure button.) If
so, turning it up to 100% will give you the maximum volume. Also, double-click on the little
yellow speaker in the bottom right corner of your screen and check both the Master Volume
(usually the leftmost slider) and the Wave Volume - both of these will affect Winamp's output
volume, so you will need to set them *both* to maximum to get the maximum possible output (but
if either of them were set low before, proceed with caution - you don't want to blow your stereo
/ speakers).
3) Do you have Winamp's Equalizer enabled? If so, do you have the preamp or the band sliders set
down low. Note that you can also enable the equalizer and then use the preamp slider at left to
boost the volume that Winamp plays at - again be careful... go up a little at a time, checking
the results.
4) Make sure you're using the right output socket from your sound card - generally you'd want to
use the Line Out socket...
Generally, if you go through these things, you should have no problem producing an output level
suitable to feed an "Aux In" input on a stereo amp, equalizer or mixer... although it
is certainly true that different sound cards can differ very substantially in the levels they
put out - I don't have to use the Winamp Equalizer to boost the level on either of the machines
I feed to stereos, but I do set the Winamp volume to 100% on the living room machine, whereas
I'm mostly using in the 10-30% range on my office machine (I tend to control the volume of the
office playback from the PC, whereas with the living room machine, I tend to leave Winamp at
100% and use the volume control on the stereo...)
Click on the top left corner to bring up the main menu, select Options, then Preferences. Select
Output in the left hand window. You should see the Wave Out plugin selected in the right hand
window. Click on the Configure button. There are two things to check in the window that comes
up... at the top it will offer a choice of output devices - if there are several devices
offered, try choosing "Wave Mapper" since this generally works best. Selecting an
alternate device, such as your sound card's system, may result in poorer sound. Also it's
possible that you had the "Direct Sound" output plugin selected, rather than the
"Wave Out" plugin... this will also generally result in very quiet output. So...
select the Wave Out plugin, and configure it to use the Wave Mapper for output. You might also
try disabling Winamp's volume control by unselecting the "Enable Volume Control"
checkbox in the Configure window for the Wave Out plugin... this will leave all volume control
to you Windows system controls.
Using the CDDB is an option in Winamp. It's actually very handy - it goes out over the net and
accesses the CDDB site and, based on an ID which all commercial CDs carry, it retrieves the name
of the CD you're playing and all the track names, so Winamp can display those, rather than just
displaying Track 1, Track 2 etc. It won't work if the CD you're playing is home made or from a
really obscure source, but it works with pretty much anything you'd buy in a CD store.
If you really don't want to use the CDDB it's very simple to turn it off - in Winamp go to
Preferences (Ctrl-P), then select Plugins / Input in the left hand pane, select Nullsoft
CD/LineIn plugin in the right pane, and press the Configure button... on the settings tab that
pops up there is a check-box for "Use CDDB" - if you uncheck this, Winamp will no
longer use the CDDB when playing CDs.
It's *extremely* simple. Just put the zip files that you downloaded into the "skins"
directory under your Winamp directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\Winamp\Skins) and then when Winamp
is running press Alt-S to browse your skins - a list will pop up, and you can just click on each
name and see the skin applied to Winamp.
Yes it will. You will probably need to change some options to get it to play well. For example,
go to the mainmenu / Visualization / Visualization Mode and select "Off" - this will
turn off the scope / analyzer display in the Winamp window, which will save some CPU. Perhaps
more importantly go to Options / Preferences and select Input in the left window and then select
Nullsoft MPEG audio decoder in the right window and press the Configure button. Try changing
"Decoder Mode" to 486, K5, non-MMX instead of Pentium or Pentium Pro. Also try setting
the Quality to Half or Quarter. If you set enough of these options down, Winamp will certainly
play MP3 fine on a 486. OTOH setting the options down *will* decrease the quality of the sound,
so the trick is not to reduce more than you have to. Get rid of the visualisation first. Also
right click on the song title on the main menu and uncheck "Autoscroll song title" in
the pop-up menu - this will also save a bit of CPU, and every little helps.
WHAT IS MP3?
General questions about the MP3 format, managing your MP3 files, etc:
The sampling frequency is basically the number of times per second audio is sampled and stored
as a number - CD audio is sampled at 44.1 KHz, which means 44,100 samples per second. CD audio
uses 16 bit samples, so the bitrate of uncompressed CD audio = 44,100 x 16 bits per second (well
x 2 actually, because it's stereo).
The "bitrate" on the other hand, when talking about MP3 files, refers to the transfer
bitrate for which the files are encoded - i.e. an MP3 file encoded "at a bitrate of 128
Kbps" is compressed such that it could be streamed continuously through a link providing a
transfer rate of 128 thousand bits per second. But most of us don't really use MP3 as a
streaming medium (except for shoutcast, etc.) so really what the MP3 "bitrate" is a
measure of is how severely the files is being compressed - the lower the bitrate, the more the
file has been compressed... and the more you compress a file, the more of the original data is
lost, and so the worse the playback sound quality will be. It's almost exactly analogous to
compressing a JPG image with a higher compression ratio - you get a smaller file, but when you
view it, it doesn't look as good.
I think you're looking for a program such a MP3 Explorer. Actually there are (confusingly) two
programs called MP3 Explorer, one from Trashsoft and one from another company. They can both be
downloaded through ZDNet (www.hotfiles.com) I believe.
Doing a ZDNet search for "MP3 database" will probably find others also. I think this
is the kind of thing you want...
The ID3 tag format is basically standard, I believe... the data elements are Title, Artist,
Album, Year, Genre, and Comment.
There are database programs for tracking and manipulating your MP3 collection. Try searching the
ZDNet software library for "mp3 database" and you'll come up with a bunch. MP3
Explorer from Trashsoft seems to be quite a popular one.
Aw heck... this is another of those questions that people debate *endlessly*. There really is no
one answer - it depends on your ears, your equipment, etc. I think it's probably fair to say
that 128 Kbps is a bit on the low side, although it may sound fine from some encoders for some
songs under some circumstances, whilst 160 Kbps done by a good encoder should sound pretty good
to most people under most circumstances.... *but* I know some people will insist on higher
standards. Different encoding software really does make a difference - some encoding software
produces results that sound pretty awful to me at 128 Kbps, whereas other software produces ok
results... e.g. speaking strictly from my own experience, 128 Kbps files from the older versions of Musicmatch Jukebox which used the Xing encoder or from Audiocatalyst often sound *really* poor, whereas BladeEnc (which is free) produces files at 128 Kbps which are often quite acceptable. The LAME encoder, an open source project, is another good free alternative, probably slightly superior to BladeEnc. And the free download of Musicmatch Jukebox now lets you encode at all bitrates using a version of the Fraunhofer encoder. I mostly rip to WAV files, and then encode using either the LAME or Fraunhofer encoder at 160 Kbps at the moment. If I'm not happy listening to the results on earphones, then I'll try 192 Kbps...
VBR stands for Variable Bit Rate. It's a method of encoding audio to MP3 that allows for
different sections of the file to be encoded at different bitrates, depending upon the demands
of the source audio (some type of sound require a higher bitrate, others encode well using a
lower bitrate).
I'd like to hear more expert opinions myself.
My own experience has brought me down against VBR so far - I found that it produced pretty large
files anyway, since you need a fairly high minimum bitrate to get good quality, and then it
seems prone to occasionally producing odd flanging or ringing sounds... so it seemed to reliably
address neither filesize nor quality demands. Which is not to say, certainly, that some VBR
encoded files do not sound good.
If someone has more experience with VBR and can make recommendations, I'd be interested. My
previous experiences were with the Xing encoder. I now have the LAME encoder, which also
supports VBR, but I haven't experimented with using VBR in LAME yet. The LAME documentation
itself doesn't seem to be exactly terribly encouraging about it, from what I remember...
Frequently asked question which people can discuss endlessly.
KHz measures the sampling frequency in kilo-hertz - that is it indicated the number of thousands
of samples per second which make up the sound file. CD audio is in 16 bit stereo at 44.1 KHz,
which means it has 44,100 samples per second, each sample consisting of two 16 bit elements, one
for each channel of the stereo.
OTOH kbps is actually a measure of data transfer rate - it means kilo bits per second, i.e. the
number of thousands of bits transferred per second. When applied to MP3 files it refers to the
rate at which the file would have to transferred for the audio data to be transferred in real
time (i.e. for 1 seconds worth of audio to be transferred in 1 second of elapsed time).
Essentially this means it is a measure of how much the audio data has been compressed in
creating the MP3 files. Uncompressed CD audio data requires a transfer rate of 1,411.2 kpbs (16
x 2 x 44,100), so MP3 data encoded for 128 kbps is compressed by a factor of 11.025.
As to what MP3 encoding rate can approximate to CD quality data to the satisfaction of a
listener - well that's the part people argue about endlessly. It depends on the individual
listener, and on the playback equipment and the circumstances. I think it's fair to say that few
people feel that a rate of lower than 128 kbps is adequate. A lot of people find 160 kbps good
enough, but some still hear problems and go for higher rates. Also all encoders are not equal,
allowing more room for discussion (that is encoder X may produce much better sounding files at
128 kbps than encoder Y).
Well it's a tricky question. In one sense, a standard might be to adjust the recording process
so that the highest peak in each song uses 100% of the sample capacity - and it's quite common
to find songs recorded like that. But of course, this will result in the *average* amplitude of
songs varying enormously, and it's the average amplitude that mostly determines how
"loud" the song sounds to you (although the frequency distribution has quite a bit to
do with it too - perceptual audio is complex). If you make the songs all the same average
amplitude, you will probably end up "clipping" the peaks of some of them, unless you
aim for a pretty low average amplitude. This is why I prefer to adjust each song manually in a
good wave editor. I might add that I don't think a little clipping is necessarily the end of the
world when you're dealing with rock... ultimately perception is everything, and most automated
"normalisation" doesn't account for perception very well.
"Ripping" refers to the process of extracting audio data from an audio CD (generally
via Digital Audio Extraction, rather than via an analogue recording link) and storing it as
digital audio data of some form on your PC hard disk.
"Encoding" refers to the process of taking uncompressed digital audio data (e.g. WAV
files on a PC, AIFF files on a Mac) and compressing them according to a particular compression
scheme, such as MP3.
So "ripping" would take a CD track and make a file on your PC hard disk.
"Encoding" would take, for example, a WAV file on your PC and make, for example, an
MP3 file from it. If you take a track from an audio CD and create an MP3 file on your hard disk
from it directly, then you are ripping and encoding in one step.
Unfortunately not. Any CD drive can play audio CDs, it's true. But the term "ripping"
is mostly used to refer to Digital Audio Extraction (i.e. extracting the audio data digitally to
the computer, rather than converting it to analogue data in the drive and playing it through the
soundcard directly, which is what happens when you "play" an audio CD on your computer
drive). Not all CD drives support Digital Audio Extraction... and even for those that do support
it, the speed and reliability vary enormously from drive to drive. If your drive absolutely
won't do DAE, then you can fall back on "analogue ripping" - i.e. just playing the CD
and then recording the analogue signal back through your soundcard... but the results won't be
as good as a proper digital rip. Musicmatch supports analogue recording from CDs, for example,
or you can just play the CD and then record using a WAV recording program (such as Goldwave from
www.goldwave.com).
How do you tell if your drive supports DAE? Well if you have Adaptec Easy CD Creator it has a
nice little option in it (under "System tests") for testing your drive to see if it
performs DAE, and if so, at what speed. Also other ripper programs, such as CDEX and Exact Audio
Copy, give various diagnostic messages if there are problems with the ripping process. I'm
afraid I don't know of a free standalone program for testing drives.
One thing I'd suggest is that you go to the Adaptec site. Adaptec have a little program called
aspichk.exe, which is available in the download area of their website (http://www.adaptec.com/) - this program will check on your
installation and report back. When I run it on my system, it reports version 4.60 for all files
and says that ASPI is installed and fully operational. If this program identifies errors or
version mismatches in your ASPI installation, you may need to reinstall these programs to get
your burner working properly. The driver files themselves are also available from Adaptec's
website. Go to:
From this page you can download both the aspichk.exe program, and a program to update your ASPI
layer if it is not up to date. I think that might be a good step towards getting Easy CD working
properly.
There certainly *are* programs that rip to MP3 files. Musicmatch Jukebox and CDEX are two well
known examples. MP3 Wizard is another.
It is true that sometimes problems result from trying to encode on the fly, mainly because the
digital audio extraction from the CD ROM drive is to some extent a time-sensitive task. If it
works, fine. If you have doubts as to whether it's working properly, then try ripping to WAV
files first and then encoding afterwards. Ripping to WAV files is the simplest, since it
involves very little manipulation of the basic PCM data ripped from the CD.
It sounds as if you're having some problems with your digital audio extraction. Exact Audio Copy
is a good, free ripping program which seems to be perhaps the best at producing good, clean rips
in difficult situations (tricky hardware, CDs in poor condition, etc.) It may be a little slow,
but if you're getting poor results with other programs, you might want to try it. You can
download it from:
OK, there are a couple of different issues here. When you play a CD player with the CDPlayer and
record it with a WAV recoding program you are doing an analogue transfer of sound - that is you
are playing the CD on your drive and producing an analogue output stream, and then reading that
back in and converting it to digital through your soundcard and recording the results. This will
not give you as good a quality WAV file as a digital "rip", which transfers the
digital data from the disk via digital audio extraction (DEA). However, if you are satisfied
with the results of analogue extraction, there are a number of options open to you which will
get around the limitations of Windows Sound Recorder, for example. Download Goldwave from www.goldwave.com for example - it will allow you to record
WAV files of any length from your soundcard, and to edit them (well, providing you have enough
disk space, of course). Or you could use Musicmatch Jukebox which has a option to record tracks
from CD via analogue transfer.
However, I would advise you to give digital extraction more of a try. If you are having problems
ripping I strongly advise you to try Exact Audio Copy which has a high level of error checking
and correction built into it - it may be slow, but it should produce good results. EAC is free
and can be downloaded from:
If you're using Digital Audio Extraction (which is what is usually meant by
"ripping"), then I don't believe anything "controls the volume" - you are
simply taking the digital PCM data from the audio CD and transferring it to digital PCM data in
a WAV file on your PC (well, you may also be doing MP3 encoding, but that's actually a second
step). The "volume" is simply a direct transfer of the sample amplitude from the
CD...
Another useful program, if you have hardware which presents you with difficulties in the area of
Digital Audio Extraction, or if you are trying to rip from CDs in poor condition, is Exact Audio
Copy, available (free again) from:
And Musicmatch Jukebox now let's you encode at all bitrates, right up to 320 kbps, using the free downloadable version, which can also burn audio CDs... you only have to register the program to get access to features such as an advanced equalizer for playback and support for higher CD burning speeds.
Well I did some comparisons using Musicmatch Jukebox (which is what I used to use), CDEX and
Exact Audio Copy a while back. Basically they all worked fine... but this was on a Pentium II
450 with a good drive and clean CDs. I ripped to WAV files, and then did digital compares, and
the files were all identical, except for a few bytes at the start and end added on by some
rips.
I used to recommend CDEX over Musicmatch because:
1) It was free. (But so is Musicmatch now, almost - the free version encodes at all bitrates, and burns audio CDs...)
2) It came with the Blade and LAME encoders, both of which I prefered to the Xing encoder which
Musicmatch used. CDex also comes with an MP2 encoder. (But Musicmatch now uses a version of the Fraunhofer encoder, which performs pretty comparably to the LAME encoder, and is actually faster...)
You might as well download both programs, and see which you like best. CDex has a simpler interface, and is maybe a bit slower. Musicmatch is fast, and fairly flashy, but also seems a bit flaky, prone to occasional crashing and unpredictable or unwanted behaviour.
Exact Audio Copy is always worth having around for cases where it's hard to get a good rip
(e.g. scratched disks)... it does its best to get a good copy by error correction techniques including extracting multiple times and comparing the results.
Well, you can certainly use it, but in essence, CDFS.VXD *is* a ripper program, even though it
is disguised as a device driver. After all, device drivers are just programs. And what it is
doing is ripping, inasmuch as it is allowing you to digitally extract audio data from an audio
CD (so far as I know, that's the definition of "ripping"). True you can't
"execute" CDFS.VXD per se - you have to use some other program, such as Windows
Explorer, as a front end... but CDFS.VXD is performing the digital audio extraction and passing
the data to whatever program you make the request through, so I'd say it's a ripper. And
presumably it's bound by the limitations applicable to all other rippers (i.e. its performance
will depend upon the ability of your CD ROM drive to support digital audio extraction, and it
may have the same problems as other rippers in terms of inexact data resulting from the lack of
provision for digital error correction on audio CDs).
Not using the normal Nullsoft CD / Line-in Plugin, no it isn't, because using this plugin Winamp
doesn't actually read in the sound from the CD when 'playing' CDs. Like Windows CD Player,
Winamp simply tells your CD drive to play in audio format and which track to play, and the sound
then goes via the audio cable which connects your CD drive to your sound card - this can be
simply verifified by disconnecting this cable... if you do, you won't hear any sound when you
'play' a CD in Winamp. To create WAV files from an audio CD you need to use software designed
for ripping.
If you download CDEX (from www.cdex.n3.net) and unzip it
into a directory, then execute the main file, cdex.exe, it has options to go from CD to WAV, CD
to MP3, WAV to MP3, and MP3 to WAV. For the options which go to MP3 you need to go to Options /
Settings, and on the MP3 Encoder tab select which encoder you want to use, and the parameters
(bitrate, stereo mode etc...) that you want to use. The LAME and Blade encoders come with CDEX,
as does an MP2 encoder.
It depends exactly how you define "free" and how you propose to determine the
"best". I wouldn't presume to make an authoritative statements about the best, but if
you download CDEX from:
it includes the Blade and LAME encoders, both of which are very good at bitrates of 160 kbps or
higher. And yes, it is free.
The various versions of encoder produced by Fraunhofer are very good, but about the only version
that's legitimately "free" is the one included with Microsoft Netshow (downloadable
from www.microsoft.com) and that only works up to 56
kbps, which is pretty useless. If you download a program called L3encwin, which so far as I know
is still available from various shareware sites (I believe I downloaded it from www.winfiles.com), it includes the old Fraunhofer encode and
decode programs that work up to 128 Kbps. L3encwin itself is just a Windows front end you can
use, since the old Fraunhofer programs just work from a command line.
Aargh! This is an *endless* conversation. Try searching on Deja News for group alt.music.mp3 and
topic "best mp3" - you'll find tons of stuff. Also search for "bitrate" and
you'll find relevant stuff.
The very short answer is - yes you will lose something when you encode to MP3... what encoder
and what bitrate and other options you have to use to get to the point where what you lose is
not noticeable to you or doesn't bother you anymore is a question open to endless debate, and
depending much on your personal hearing.
Just to state my own conclusions to this point in time (which are entirely personal and subject
to ongoing change):
* Stay away from Xing at least for lower bitrates and VBR - which means don't encode with
older releases of Musicmatch (4.2 or before) or Audiocatalyst.
* Use Fraunhofer for sure for bitrates 128 or below.
will convert WAV files to MP3 using either the Blade or the LAME encoder (both included). It
does not require any special install - you simply unzip the programs into a directory. It
supposedly runs fine under NT, although I haven't tried it on an NT machine, only in Win 95 and
Win 98 (its documentation specifically says that it works under NT, though).
It doesn't have a pretty GUI interface - you either just drag files and drop them right onto the
exe in explorer, or you run it from a command line... but it does a good job, and processes
batches as you requested. And it's freeware.
If you go to www.winfiles.com and from their search page
search for a program called "l3encwin", you can download it, and you will find that it
has the old Frauenhofer l3enc.exe and l3dec.exe included with it (l3encwin is a front-end for
the Frauenhofer codecs... but it can't access all the features). If you put these files, as
instructed by the "readme" that comes with l3encwin, into your windows directory or
any directory on your default path, you should be able to use them.
You just put it in as a parameter. You *must* execute BladeEnc from the command line if you want
to use a different bitrate - the "drag-and-drop" method *only* supports the default
128 Kbps. To encode a bunch of WAV files at 160 Kbps, open a DOS window and then type, for
example:
c:\bladedir\bladeenc -160 c:\wavdir\track*.wav
This assumes that:
* "bladedir" is the directory you have bladeenc.exe in - if that directory is on your
default path, or is the current directory, then you don't need to type it
* wavdir is the directory where you have your WAV files
This command will encode all WAV files whose names start with "track" at 160 Kbps and
place the resulting MP3 files into wavdir.
Just plug the output from your tape player into the "Line In" socket on your sound
card... I use a Sony Walkman with Dolby to do cassettes myself, and then all you need is a cable
with 1/8" stereo miniplugs on each end - plug one end into the earphone socket of the
Walkman, and the other into the sound card line in. Then turn the volume on the Walkman all the
way down, fire up your system volume control and choose Options / Properties / Recording and
select the the "Line" source. Then press play on the Walkman, and gently turn up the
volume until you get a level which registers well but doesn't clip (shown by the red
"lights" in the volume control level indicator) during the loudest parts. To record
the WAV files you'll need a program capable of recording large files... GoldWave (available from
www.goldwave.com) is a good program which will also allow
you to edit your WAV files. If you want "CD Quality" be sure to set the controls in
your WAV recording program to 44.1 kbs, stereo, 16 bit. Be warned that you'll need about 10Mb of
hard-disk space for each minute recorded. Once you've recorded the file, use the WAV recording
/editing program's "cut" function to trim off any extra stuff before the beginning or
after the end of the song. If you just want to put it onto an audio CD, you can do that directly
from the WAV file. If you want an MP3 file, you'll have to use an MP3 encoder to process your
WAV file. BladeEnc is quite a good one, and is entirely free, or download CDEX from www.cdex.n3.net - it includes the Blade and LAME
encoders.
Well, connecting the output from a magnetic phono cartridge directly into a sound card probably
is not going to work very well. The output from a magnetic cartridge is very low level. Not only
that, but it also has some inherent frequency distortions, which the pre-amp circuits in your
stereo are designed to correct for.
So... you either need to use some sort of pre-amp designed to take input from a magnetic
cartridge and produce line level outputs (I have an old one I bought from Radio Shack, but I'm
not sure that they sell them any more). If you can't use a pre-amp... then you don't have much
choice but to run a line out from your receiver... or to record to tape, and then connect, say,
the headphone jack from a walkman to the line-in of your sound card (those levels match pretty
well - just turn the walkman volume right down at first, then turn it up gradually until you get
a good level). If you have any kind of mixer laying around, they often have inputs for
"Magnetic phono" also - so you could plug your turntable into the mixer "Magnetic
phono" input and then connect the line-out from the mixer into your sound card...
Once you get a connection that works, you'll need a WAV editing / recording program to record
with. Goldwave (www.goldwave.com) is a good one.
You may also want to use specialised software to clean up the effects of scratched on your disks
- there are several program to do this. The program names that I am aware of are:
You can download all of them through the ZDNet software library at www.hotfiles.com - just search for the names.
Then you'll need an MP3 encoder to actually change your WAV files to MP3 files. You can download
CDEX from www.cdex.n3.net and it will let you encode WAV
files to MP3 using either the Blade or the LAME encoder.
There are several program to do this. They actually work with WAV files, not MP3, so if you have
problem MP3 files, you'll have to decode them to WAV files, fix the WAV files and then re-encode
(unfortunate... but because of the way MP3 compression works, trying to do any editing directly
on MP3 files is very tricky). The program names that I am aware of are:
You can download all of them through the ZDNet software library at www.hotfiles.com - just search for the names.
***
A good general program for editing WAV files is Goldwave, available from www.goldwave.com - it allows various forms of filtering and
manipulations which may help with noise problems. There are also some programs specifically
designed to help in removing vinyl record noises. The program names that I am aware of are:
You can download all of them through the ZDNet software library at www.hotfiles.com - just search for the names. Use them with
caution, as the results may not always be satisfactory. Listen and see if you think the results
are an actual improvement...
Well there are many ways you *could* do it. But simply, what I'd recommend is:
1) Download Goldwave from www.goldwave.com it's an
excellent shareware program which allows for the recording and editing (with a comprehensive
range of functions) of WAV files. You can try it free, and the registration fee is reasonable.
Connect your tape player into the line-in of your sound card and record to 44.1 Khz 16 bit
signed stereo WAV files. Note that you have to be a bit more tricky for LPs - you'll need to
take a signal after pre-amplification and correction, since the output from your phono deck
itself is not suitable. If your stereo has an "aux out" you should be able to use
that. Another possibility is to record your LP tracks to cassette and then play the tape into
your sound card (but obviously it's better to avoid this if you can, since it's likely to
introduce some additional quality loss).
2) Edit the WAV files to get them sounding the best you can. There are programs such as
"popfix" designed specifically the remove from WAV files the pops created by scratches
on vinyl Lps... you might want to try such a program if you have this problem. Once the WAV
files is as good as you can get it, encode it to MP3 using encoder software. I recommend
BladeEnc - it's free and it does a pretty good job. Popfix and BladeEnc can both be downloaded
from the ZDNet software library at www.hotfiles.com
Bring up your Windows audio controlls (double click on the little yellow speaker in the tray)
and select Options / Properties and then click on the Recording radio button... also make sure
that in the window at the bottom the checkbox beside Line is selected - now click OK. You should
see a mixer for your recording inputs. Things vary a bit depending on your Windows version and
your sound card drivers, but you may need to either select or un-mute the Line source, and set
the slider for Line to a reasonable level. *Then* try your recording - hopefully you should get
something this time.
Well... you might need to fiddle with your Windows volume controls - I know I do (I imagine it
depends on your sound card drivers exactly how this works). In my case, I double click on the
little speaker in the systray to bring up the main volume mixer, and then I select Options /
Properties and click on the "Recording" radio button. Then, after making sure that
"Line" is among the selected controls in the little window at the bottom, I click the
OK button. This gives me the mixer for input controls. Then I select the checkbox under the
"Line In" slider, and adjust the slider itself (with some music playing through the
connection) until I get a good level. *Then* it's possible to record ok from the line in.
If you get a "loud humming sound" I'd be inclined to suspect some sort of ground loop
between the equipment - which could be very dangerous (i.e. could trash your sound card,
easily). Are both your stereo and your computer properly grounded (earthed)? If all you
equipment is properly plugged into wall sockets using three-pin plugs, and the earth wires are
properly connected to the equipment, and you still get a hum when you connect the two systems,
I'd almost suspect that there is a problem with your house wiring. You might try separately
grounding both systems by connecting the frames to a good ground (metal water pipes, for
example). Or just plugging both pieces of equipment into the same wall circuit might eliminate
the problem. It really is important that your equipment is earthed properly, and also that the
polarity is correct (i.e. the line and return wires are actually connected up the right way
round).
Another way to get around the problem to some degree might be to use something like a walkman as
a source, which doesn't need to be grounded or to use mains power at all. If you still get a
hum, especially if you get a hum only when you touch the walkman, then your computer is not
grounded properly (the hum being the mains AC cycle frequency making its way through the sound
card circuits...)
RECORDING FROM MP3
Moving MP3 off your PC to listen to elsewhere (includes CD burning):
(see also: CHANGING MP3)
There are programs that claim to be able to take MP3 files and decode them and burn them to an
audio CD all in one operation... MP3 CD Maker is one such program. I believe Nero can also do
this. I tried MP3 CD Maker, and I couldn't get it to even burn a single track successfully, and
many other people seem to have had problems with it as well... but I suppose *somebody*
somewhere must have got it to work. Nero I haven't tried.
Personally I still use a two step process... well I guess three step really:
1) Decode the MP3 files to WAV files. Generally any MP3 player will do this. E.g. in Winamp
Ctrl-p for Preferences, select Output, select Nullsoft Disk Writer plugin, and press the
Configure button to choose the directory for your WAV files. Then just "play" the
songs you want to convert. Don't forget to go back into Preferences and set Output back to
Nullsoft Wave Out plugin when you're done, so Winamp will go back to playing audio rather than
producing WAV files.
2) Edit the WAV files as required... trim out bits you don't want, adjust the level as required,
etc. Goldwave is a good shareware program for doing this (www.goldwave.com). If the files are sampled at a rate other
than 44.1 KHz you will also need to resample them to 44.1 KHz before they can be burned to an
audio CD.
3) Burn the edited WAV files to an audio CD. I use Adaptec Easy CD Creator (it came with my
burner, and it works). Pretty much any CD burning program should be able to burn an audio CD
from WAV files sampled at 44.1 KHz without a problem. Make sure that you choose the "Audio
CD" option - you don't want to just copy the WAV files to a data CD. Also, if you want the
disk to play and select tracks without a problem in various audio CD players, you might want to
try and use the "Disk at once" option, which burns the whole CD without turning off
the laser (selected on the "Advanced" tab just before you do the actual recording in
Easy CD Creator). CDs burned in "disk at once" mode will generally be handled better
by audio CD players. CDs burned in "track at a time" mode, where the laser is turned
off between each track, will generally play ok, but many audio CD players can't successfully
skip to any track other than the first on such disks, which is kind of a pain.
For Mac users a similar process can be used, but things are just a little different. On a Mac
you want to decode your MP3 files to AIFF files (rather than WAV, which is a Windows format)...
Mpecker Decoder (from www.anime.net/~go/mpeckers.html)
will do this for you. Then you can use a Mac CD Burning program, of which the best known is
probably Toast from Adaptec, to burn the AIFF files to an audio CD.
You can write disks for use in your car on your CD-RW writer, no problem, but *don't* use CD-RW
media - use regular CD-R disks (which are cheaper anyhow). Most audio players simply won't
recognise a CD-RW disk at all, no matter how you burn it. Use a CD-R disk, and use the
"create an audio disk" feature of your software (i.e. don't just copy the files to the
disk as data).
Convert your MP3 files to WAV files first. This is easy to do - almost all MP3 players can do
it.. e.g. with Winamp, press Ctl-P to get Preferences, then select Output in the left hand
window, then select Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in in the left window... then press the Configure
button to choose which directory you want your WAV files saving in. After you do this, every
time you "play" a file in Winamp, it will actually be output to a WAV file in your
chosen directory. To go back to actually playing files, bring Preferences up again, and select
Output and Nullsoft WaveOut plug-in, which is your normal sound playing output plugin.
Once you have converted the songs you want to WAV files, fire up Easy CD Creator, and select the
Audio CD tab (*not* the data CD tab), and drag and drop your WAV files into your CD layout,
arranging them in the order you want... then select Create CD from the main menu to burn the
CD.
That's pretty much it. There are a couple of wrinkles:
1) You have to have enough hard-disk space available for all the WAV files you want to go on
your CD... this will be over 700 Mbs for a full audio CD.
2) To be burned onto a CD the WAV files must be 16 bit stereo sampled at 44.1 KHz - Easy CD
Creator will reject them otherwise (well maybe it accepts mono... but the sampling rate has to
be right). If you are unfortunate enough to have MP3 files for which someone has used a
different sampling rate (e.g. people recording off TV seem to use 48 KHz a lot for some reason),
then you will have to "resample" the WAV files before they can be burned onto CD. You
will need an audio editing program to do this. I would recommend Goldwave (www.goldwave.com)
And Exact Audio Copy (good if you have hardware which presents you with difficulties in the area
of Digital Audio Extraction, or if you are trying to rip from CDs in poor condition) from:
And Musicmatch Jukebox now let's you encode at all bitrates, right up to 320 kbps, using the free downloadable version, which can also burn audio CDs... you only have to register the program to get access to features such as an advanced equalizer for playback and support for higher CD burning speeds.
You can actually make compilation disks with Easy CD without using a separate ripper. Just open
an Audio CD Layout, then insert each CD from which you want to take tracks in turn, and drag the
tracks you want into the layout. If you do this, and then select "Create Disk" from
the File menu, Easy CD will copy the disks a track at a time, prompting you to insert the source
CDs as needed. A better way to do it, if you have enough hard disk space, is to right click on
each track after you drag it into the layout and select "Pre-record track to disk"
from the pop up menu - this will record the track on your hard disk as a WAV file temporarily...
but this takes about 10Mb per minute of music (so around 740 Mb for a completely full audio CD).
If you can do this, then when you select "Create Disk" you won't need to reinsert the
source disks, and also you will be able to use the "Disk at once" mode (selectable
from the "Advanced" tab at recording time), which produces CDs which are better
compatible with audio CD players (audio players often have trouble searching for individual
tracks on a disk that was recorded in "one track at a time" mode).
To actually play on an audio CD player the music has to be recorded in standard audio CD format,
which is different to the format used for data CD ROM disks. The audio data is actually stored
as uncompressed PCM data at 44.1 KHz sampling rate, 16 bit stereo samples. This is similar
(although not exactly the same) to the format of uncompressed WAV files on your computer. To
play songs on an audio player you will have to burn them to CDR disks using burner software that
supports the creation of audio CDs (most do). For many burner programs you will first need to
convert the MP3 files to WAV files, which can be done using Winamp (select the Nullsoft Disk
Writer plugin as your output and then "play" the songs).
The bitrate is not relevant to the CD format - the bitrate is a measure of how severely the data
was compressed, but once the file has been converted to a WAV file (and hence decompressed) the
bitrate is gone. However, files which were compressed to a lower bitrate (and hence compressed
more) will not sound as good as ones which had a higher bitrate... I would listen carefully to a
96kbps file before burning it to CD and ask yourself is the quality really good enough?
However... if the *sampling* rate of your MP3 files is something other than 44.1 KHz, you *will*
need to resample the files before they can be burned to CD. The sampling rate is quite distinct
from the bitrate... it is essentially the number of times per second a sound sample was captured
as part of the original recording process. CD audio only supports a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz,
so any files that you put onto an audio CD *must* be as that rate. If you have files at a
different rate, you will need to use a WAV editing program (such as Goldwave, www.goldwave.com) to change the sampling rate.
- Remove any unnecessary programs from memory (use Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the task list, and
then use the "End Task" button to kill everything except Explorer and Systray...
including your virus protection software, since this can interfere with CD burning).
- Unplug your printer before restarting your PC to burn disks - printer drivers that communicate
with the printer can interfere with burning.
- Disable your screen-saver before burning - a screen saver firing up can easily wreck a burn.
Go to Control Panel / Display and set Screen Saver to .
- Burn at 1x rather than a higher speed.
Of course all these precautions may not be necessary... but I'd try them all if you're having
problems. Then if you get things working, you can discontinue them and see if problems come
back.
Another thing you might possibly want to do is check your ASPI layer (unless you're using a SCSI
or USB drive, in which case this is irrelevant). Adaptec have a little program called
aspichk.exe, which is available in the download area of their website (http://www.adaptec.com/) - this program will check on your
installation and report back. When I run it on my system, it reports version 4.60 for all files
and says that ASPI is installed and fully operational. If this program identifies errors or
version mismatches in your ASPI installation, you may need to reinstall these programs to get
your burner working properly. The driver files themselves are also available from Adaptec's
website. Go to:
The problem is almost certainly that whilst they are indeed valid WAV files, they are *not*
valid files for CD audio. CD audio *only* supports a sampling rate of 44.1 Khz and a sample size
of 16 bits, in stereo (two channels). If your WAV file does not correspond with these parameters
(most commonly because the sampling rate is different, e.g. 48 Khz), then a CD burning program
will *not* accept it.
The process of converting MP3 to WAV simply undoes the MP3 compression... it does *not* change
things such as the sampling rate. To make these WAV files you have produced suitable for burning
to CD audio you will need to perform an additional step: use a WAV editing program (such as
Goldwave, available from www.goldwave.com) to
"resample" the WAV files... convert them to 44.1 KHz, 16 bit, stereo - then your
software should accept them for burning to CD without a problem.
There is no reason why a home-burned CD should not have the same sound quality as a store bought
CD... *if* the music files you are burning onto the CD have that quality. Most of the reasons
for quality loss are in the files, not the CD burning process - when audio data is compressed to
MP3 some quality is lost... how much, depends upon how much the data is compressed (the lower
the bitrate the more compression, and the more quality loss), and what encoder software is used
(different encoders perform differently).
There are some problems you may encounter playing home-burned CDs in audio CD players, but
generally they don't pertain directly to sound quality. Sometimes you will find that an audio
player will not recognise a home-burned CD at all - this is either because an error was made
burning the CD (not burned properly as an audio CD or whatever), or because that particular
player cannot read the CD media used. Never use CD-RW disks when making audio CDs. If you have a
problem with one brand of CDR disk, try another.
Another common problem is that audio CD players often will not select tracks / skip from track
to track / perform random play on home-burned CDs. This is usually because there are small gaps
between the tracks caused by the "track at a time" burning method which is the default
in most burner programs. You can remove this problem by being sure to always burn your audio CDs
in "disk at once" mode - this way the whole CD will be burned without turning off the
laser, and audio players should be able to locate all the tracks fine, and support functions
such as random play.
Well yes... you certainly can record it, and then later erase that stuff and record something
else instead. The catch is that even if you use standard audio CD format you almost certainly
won't be able to play a CD-RW disk in any of your audio CD players... I'm not too clear about
the engineering reasons, but there's something about the way the recording on a CD-RW disk is
done which results in it simply not being readable by most audio CD players, or indeed older CD-ROM drives - a drive must be "multi-read" capable in order to be able to read CD-RW
disks, I believe. I've heard that some of the latest audio CD players *can* play CD-RW disks,
but I've never found one that could myself.
You can copy your MP3 files directly, without conversion, to a data CD, and that way you will
get somewhere between 7 and 11 hours of music on a CD (depending on the bitrate of your MP3
files)... but you can't play such a CD in an audio CD player, however you can play it in a
computer, using Winamp or whatever, and now a couple of different companies have come up with
portable players to play such CDs - I just read a review of a new one, but I forget the name
(sorry)... it was selling for $300 US, looked pretty much like a standard diskman, and could
play CD ROM disks with MP3 files on them and also regular audio CDs. OK... I went and found the
mag with the review - it's called the Pine SM-2000C D'Music Portable, and the manufacturer's
website is at www.pineusa.com - yep, I just checked the
URL, and they have a picture of it right on the main page... mind you, they say it's
"coming soon". There's another company that has a similar unit, also "coming
soon" - check out Vertical Horizons at www.evhi.com. And
here's yet another one: www.mambox.com/.
I got Direct CD with my drive, and you certainly can use it to copy MP3 files to a CD-RW disk.
And I started out doing so. However, I have now switched to burning them to CDR disks instead.
There are pros and cons both ways:
Direct CD pros & cons:
Pro -You can copy individual files easily whenever you want to. You can change or delete files
after you copy them.
Con - You have to 'format' the CD-RW disk first, which takes an hour or more for a complete
format. Any computer on which you want to play the disks must either have Direct CD installed,
or have a driver file for reading Direct CD disks installed (there is an option in Direct CD to
put the required driver file onto a floppy, so it's actually easy enough to give it to anybody
who you want to read your disks). Even with the required software, many older CD ROM drives
cannot read CD-RW disks (this is the biggest restriction for me). The disks are a little more
expensive than CDR disks.
CDR pros & cons:
Pro - The disks can be read by any CD ROM drive without a problem. Also they hold a little more
data, since the full 650 MB of the disk can be used for files, whereas Direct CD takes up quite
a
