MP3
About
of compressing audio files (WAV's, RAW's etc.). MP3 audio works by using psychoaccoustic
compression, which removes information from the signals that your ears can't pick up, like the
sound of a cat walking during a thunderstorm. MP3 can reach compression rates up to 12:1
without loosing the (CD) quality of your original recording. This means you won't have to deal
with files from about 50 MB's anymore but only with about 4 MB's files!!
(MP3 World Home)
Are MP3 files illegal? 
Here an important distinction is to be made between the media (MP3) and
the content (the
actual song you compressed). There is nothing inherently illegal in the creation of an MP3 file.
It is just another type of audio file, and you can't get into trouble for encoding anything in the
new format, versus encoding audio in a WAV file, etc.
(So making digitally compressed copies of CD's or Records you own is mere archiving.)
What is illegal is making MP3 files of copyrighted songs and redistributing them without a license.
This is what the underground MP3 scene does.
(MP3 World Home)
Creating MP3 files 
1. CD-Ripping
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harddisk. Make sure that there is enough space available: the .wav-files will be approximately
50 MB's!
WinDAC32 v1.41
The best CD Ripper for Win95/NT. Support for most common SCSI and ATAPI
CD-ROM drives. This ripper offers you many features like full drive control
(play/stop/pause/skip/eject) and both English and German user interface.
The audio tracks are copied in background.
Easy CD Pro (Adaptec) comes
with most CD-writers.
The CD-Deck module offers the possibility to convert the CD (redbook)
PCM-files to harddisk Wav-files.
Audiograbber is a program that copies digital music from CD's. It copies the music digitally, not using the sound card, enabling you to make perfect copies of the original sound tracks. It includes functions that check that the copies made are true to the original. Audiograbber can also automatically normalize the music, delete silence from the start and end of tracks and send them to an external program like Fraunhofers L3enc for automatic creation of mp3's. It can also use Fraunhofers internal acm CODEC or BladeEnc's freeware DLL to create MP3's.
2. Encoding the wav-files
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files into MP3 files. To do this you'll need to download a Mp3 Encoder. Encoding a .wav file
to a MP3 file can take up some time.
MPeg Encoder v0.07
Freeware MP3 encoder for windows 95/98/NT in a DOS-box. Fortunately
there is a
Users-Interface, so there is no need to type out all the (C++) commands,
options etc.
Encoding a CD-album however takes all night.
Much faster (approximately 10 minutes per 50Mb Wav-file) is:
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- Shareware, registration after 30 days
- It runs on Windows 95 / 98 & Windows NT 4.x.
- You can very easy compress a file, with the Sound Limit Wizard.
- Supports input .WAV files, 44KHz, Mono, Stereo, 16bit.
- Supports output compressions from 32Kbs to 320Kbs, Layer 1, 2 &
Layer 3.
- The registered version supports multiple file encoding.
- I prefer encoding at 128 kbps giving a satisfactory compression of
1:10
Copyright (c)1997 by EASTern DIGITAL Inc.
3. Music
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| After checking the newborn MP3-files (did you use the right compression
rate, do you have the right number of tracks etc.?) you can dispose of
the 500Mb of wav-files .
WinAMP is a MP3-player in a CD-Deck Users Interface. |
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About naming the files: The ripped files keep their original track numbers 'track01' etc. WinAmp adds song title, artist, album etc. for better recognition.