WHAT Is
MP3? 
What is MP3 | Glossary | Players | Make MP3 | FAQs | MP3 Links
For those of you who still don't know.....
Some people still don't get what MP3 actually is. Let me get this straight. MP3, is an abbreviation for MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) Layer-3 Audio encoding technology.
Now what is the purpose of this audio encoding?
Encoding is the process to compress audio as efficient as possible so that it is able to be transmitted over lower bandwidth with higher quality. Yes, I mean like Real Audio, but this one is MUCH better! I mean, with RealAudio, you can stream near-CD quality (33 KHz) music with ISDN connection. With this, you can stream CD quality (44.1 KHz) with ISDN at very low buffering skips. Usually, a raw PCM data, such as Wave audio files (*.wav) of CD quality (44.1 KHz, Stereo) requires more than 10 megs of space for every minute. that's why an audio CD that you usually buy can only contain about 40 minutes of music each. With this MPEG Layer-3, you can encode the audio files by the ratio of 1:12, even up to 1:14, without a reduce in the sound quality which is noticable by human ears. This means, a 1 minute of CD quality audio only requires 800 KB of disk space, and this also means a CD-ROM can contain up to 15 hours of music! Also, this means we can transfer full soundtracks and music files of CD quality in only 20 minutes or so with 28.8 connection! Technology breakthrough? Yess!
I had many comments on the quality of the output and all of them were amazaed at the richness of the precise sound quality. Some of them couldn't believe that my computer is actually playing the music! It will definitely change the way u look at your computer !!!!
Is this legal? Well I think it should be!
If u were to borrow a CD from your friend and record it onto a cassette...... that's legal!! No one's complaining about that so no one should start here either. The Net should be a place with unlimited supply of information. That includes exchanging and sharing new technology in order to keep the IT world moving further ahead. So, if u see all those lame disclaimers, IGNORE them and go ahead - download those MP3s straightaway !
Where do I find this amazing technology?
If you're desperately in need of an MP3 file, and you don't know where to get it, follow my advice: do NOT use an MP3 search engine. Why? First, they might not be able to give you the MP3 files you need. Secondly, if it does find what you need, there will be tons of broken links, and you may not even able to download your favourite music after clicking through thousands of links from different servers at all. How does this happen? Well most of the leech servers (download til' u puke) have been converted into either FTP server with ratio or private login.
Then how do you find it? Well I suggest you use IRC, log on to server DALNet, USA, New York City, and the channel name is #mp3. Actually most of the servers have channel #mp3 in it, but you don't want to be flooded with 1:1 ratio personal FTP sites 'promotion' so just log on this one. In this channel, simply put on your music request, very politely. Don't use any background and foreground color command (Ctrl-K) just simple and plain text. Do not use caps, or people will even ignore you because if your egoism and the bots or sysops may even kick you out. Worse yet, you're banned for hours. Just remember to add 'please private message me' within your music request. If nobody responded, try to offer one of your music files (if you have any) and ask again for a trade. Keep repeating it every 30 seconds until someone responds; there are many users leaving / logging on the channel even in a short period of time. These are usual techniques in trading... even for softwares and games! Great things u can do on the NET yeah!
What?? You don't know IRC?? Get real! Click here to go to mIRC homepage where you can download it for free and painlessly.
It is HIGHLY recommended that you use an FTP client program or an FTP host to transfer MP3 files from and to someone else instead of using that extremely slow and sluggish IRC DCC file transfer! To find them, just go to the downloads page.
Warez = materials or pages containing materials that are copyrighted, and are being distributed illegally over the Net., for example, this page :) although it's still mild. Remember that this is NOT a fraud activity. It usually comes as distributing registered shareware programs, cracks, and the full version of the programs. Copyrighted music track distribution without permission from the origin publisher is also illegal, so you're already into it!
Ratio = You may have heard this many times. This tells you the number of files of the same calssification you will have to upload to an FTP server owned by someone else in order to download his or her files. For example, if an FTP site has a ratio of 1:5, this means that if you upload 1 file of the same class, in this case, mp3 file, you will be able to download 5 mp3 files from it before you must upload it again. However, you will need to upload first before you can download anything. Believe me, don't upload anything to a site with ratio if you can't even browse the directories and check out what music files it stores.
Leech = Download til' U puke, which means no ratio. You can download as many as you want, without having to upload; like this site!
WinAMP MP3 Audio Player V1.55 (32-bit)
WinAMP 1.0 was the Best freeware MP3 file player ever! The 1.1 was even more powerful than that! Version 1.2 has proved that 1.1 was not the best... and now, we got 1.55 here free to download. Well what's the new stuff? You got cool new spectrum which looks like flames, or color bars, and you have more buttons, more selection of associated file extension icons, adjustable WinAMP window size, and much more!!! You gotta love it! Version 1.55 has some bugs fixed over version 1.45. I doubt there will be another version of WinAMP. Size: 244 KB (freeware)
CDDA Direct Audio Ripper (16-bit & 32-bit)
It's a
program that allows you to convert raw
wave data, which are the files with CDA
extensions, CD audio track, straight into
PCM format files such as *.wav files,
ready to be encoded into MP3 files. This
program is not recording or 'capturing'
sound played by your CD-ROM, so your
CD-ROM must be SCSI or ATAPI which can
actually 'read' the CD audio instead of
just 'playing' it. Click here for the
list of CDDA compatible drives. Size:
500 KB (shareware)
WARNING: the shareware can
only record up to track 4 of audio CD).
MP3 Compressor 0.9 Beta (32-bit)
Latest but
not the most powerful, 32-bit MP3 encoder
3 times faster than L3ENC.EXE! Easy to
use stand alone program wit friendly
interface, and capable of encoding into
.wav format. Size: 1115 KB
(freeware).
WARNING: Can only encode
into the bitrate of 128 kbps. No more, no
less!
Maybe it's a bit slower than MP3 compressor, but it encode your wav files into a higher quality MP3. Also more options are available for the encoding process, such as selecting any type of valid MP3 playback format (MP3 Compressor can only give 128 kbps output) and a useful feature that allows you to hear 5 seconds of encoded preview before encoding your song. And, the interface is even friendlier! Size: 1061 KB (full-functioning shareware)
MP3 Studio External Utility V0.96 Beta
Use this rather than having to type complicating syntax in MPEG Layer-3 Audio Encoder l3enc.exe file. It's like an MP3 shell, to let you encode, decode, record CD track, record voice, etc. with a better and a more organized display. Remember that this is not yet officialy released. There a lot of bugs however, you may have to use some tricks to record the CD track into *.wav file. If you have direct audio ripper, should be no problem. Size: 349 KB (freeware)
Serial Numbers
I'm not so sure if they work but HEY...no harm trying......
Winplay
3
Serial: 100011-301000-5000
CD
Worx Win 95
Name: Nihil / Breed
Reg number: 1234567890123456
Password: NOCQCIVFRTYVHTFQ
CD
Worx Win NT
Name: United Cracking Force
Reg number: 6666666666666666
Password: INLFXCNSQPUUWBWR
L3Enc
Serial number: 909GCB0A091E-9
So how do I start?
1. You must find out whether your CD-ROM drive is supported by CDDA or not. Find this out by reading the CDDA drive list in my softwares section. Unfortunately, even if your CD-ROM is supported, I haven't been able to find the CDDA full version for you. The shareware can only rip the audio off up to track 4 only. If your CD-ROM is not supported by CDDA, read (2) below.
2. If you don't have CDDA, this means you have to capture the audio using the sound recorder. I know this is a pain if you have tried it, so you can use MP3 Studio program as the recorder to make life easier. Don't worry, the quality is still high if you do it properly. Make sure you have at least 100 megs of harddisk space, (virtual memory can be very nasty during this) and from the program switch to drive D, when it's asked 'is this an audio cd?' click yes. Find your track, and press the encode button.
3. When the encode window appears, uncheck the 'delete temporary wav' box. This program has lots of bugs. Now you don't want to encode using the L3ENC.EXE. it's 16-bit and BLOODY slow. So you want to use the IIS MP3 Producer Pro. I have got the full version for you. Just download it, again from the softwares section.
4. Click somewhere to start the encode process. Remember, you only want your MP3 Studio to record your music into wav, not to encode it using l3enc.exe. A window will appear saying "recording CD audio... please wait". When your track is finished, usually your harddisk will be flashing for a few minutes, for saving the file into disk. WARNING: Do NOT start any program while recording. TSR's loaded before you start recording is okay. Or else there will be some part of the track cut in the Wave file. Delete the wave file and restart recording if audio problems occured. 2 to 3 tries must be enough. Close all programs, TSR's, and any other utilities such as VShield, AfterDark, and screen savers.
5. Usually,
after your track is saved to harddisk as
wav, usually you will get either of these
2 conditions:
- an error message saying unable to
encode because the size of the track is
zero.
- the mp3 studio starts encoding using
l3enc.exe
If you get the error message, just close the window, close MP3 studio too, and using Windows Explorer go to your mpstudio directory. There should be a LARGE TMP file there with unique filenames. (e.g. ~M3517.TMP). Simply rename it to the filename of your choice and replace the TMP extension with WAV.
6. Start MP3 Producer Pro, and configure it not to encode it with wav header into wav extension. The size will be the same, but it just isn't tidy. Select the input file as the wav you have just recorded, and set the output file to the directory you want to place the MP3 file.
7. Choose the quality you want, then press Encode or Sample to hear 5 seconds track sample. If you're satisfied, just click on the 'Start encode' button.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Here are examples of some intriguing questions I've managed to compile.
Courtesy of 110% MP3
Q: What the hell is MP3? Why should I use MP3? How can I play MP3? How do I make my own MP3? (and tons of other questions like these!)
A: All information about the existence of MP3 in this world can be found at the top section of this page.
Q: I know exactly how to encode WAV files into MP3. How do I record CD audio to WAV? I've had hard times trying to record using sound recorder!
A: There are two alternatives. If you have an ATAPI CD-ROM (CD drives that have direct cable connection to the harddrive instead of going through the sound card or the motherboard) you want to use CDDA for faster recording at high quality, and painlessly. the list of ATAPI CD-ROM drives can be found in the MP3 Softwares section. However, please remember that the list is not completely up to date. If your CD-ROM drive is not in the list, you can use MP3 Studio. Detailed information on using MP3 studio to record your CD tracks are covered in the 'Build MP3' section.
Q: When I tried to play some MP3 files, I heard an unberable static noise!
A: Try one or more of these solutions: You set the volume of your sound card too high (NOT the speaker volume, the sound card volume which can be controlled from the Windows Taskbar). Some sound cards can't handle high volume WAV's (MP3 takes the WAV port/channels). You may have used the graphic equalizer provided in WinAMP. Equalizing to more than 0 dB, especially at the bass, can result in high noise for some sound cards. The other source of problem could be that the MP3 file itself had errors while being recorded or encoded. Most of them are MP3 files that have bitrate of 96 kbps and 128 kbps. 112 kbps MP3 files are unlikely to have errors like these. This can also occur if the MP3 file is downloaded in ASCII mode instead of BINARY mode. for you who are familiar with these terms, they are used in FTP. But it can also happen in some browsers that don't recognize the MP3 extensions. It's best to make sure that the MP3 files are compressed to ZIP before transferring.
Q: When I try to download a song, all I get is some crappy ascii code!
A: That's easy. Just shift-click on the link, or right-click and choose save file as!
Q: When I download a file it saves in a .mp2 format, how do I fix that?
A: Just as easy as the previous, right-click and choose save file as!
Q: How do I play a MP3 File?
A: Just download WinAmp or Winplay from above. Run the prog, choose the mp3 file and press play.
Q: My mom says MP3's are illegal, I don't believe her, is it true?
A: Yes and No... Some Disclaimers do say that MP3s are illegal. But think about this: Everyone is copying CD's to tapes all the time and that's "legal" And I think that the artists should be glad that we want to spread their music to the world! And MP3's are a great way to evaluate songs, but don't stop buying ordinary CD's...
Q: My downloaded MP3 sounds like shit, what should I do?
A: Download Uncook from my prog page.
1. Rename
your bad song to a new name with 8
letters or less.
2. Put Uncook in the SAME directory as
the MP3 file.
3. Open a DOS window and go to the
directory with the MP3.
4. Now use the following syntax: UNCOOK
5.Then goodsong.mp3 is the fixed tune and
you can listen to your song!
Q: Why doesn't you zip all your MP3 files?
A: MP3's are already very good compressed, zipping the would only decrease the size with some tiny percents...
Q: What is "leech"?
A: Leech is when you can download from a ftp-site 'till you puke! You don't have to upload anything to that kind if ftp's.
Q: What is "ratio"?
A: Ratio is when you have to upload to a ftp-site before you can download anything. This sux and I don't usually support that kind if sites.
The Unofficial Winamp FAQ by Justin Frankel ...in no particular order
Q: Why is Winamp so small?
A1: MFC
stands for Microsoft Foundation Classes,
and is a system that eases development of
Windows applications. MFC is used by many
Windows applications, but Winamp doesn't
use it.
A2: Winamp is designed to not take up
much space on the screen.
Q: Why does the high-quality spectrum analyzer take up so much CPU?
A: Actually, this appears to be a problem with Windows 95, not NT. It appears that certain operations involving BitBlt() are way slow in Windows 95. A fix is being derived, but for now there is the low-quality spectrum analyzer.
Q: Other players claim to have "256 bit/sample" quality. What does this mean?
A: This means that the player represents floating point numbers during the decode process with 256 bits, giving much more precision than the common 32-bit or 64-bit numbers. People claim that this produces higher sound quality, but it doesn't appear to (to us). In addition to 256 bit floating point numbers seeming needless, there is another issue. The Floating Point Unit (FPU) on Intel 486DX+ CPU's have a maximum external precision of 64 bits, meaning that for a program to perform _any_ operations on the numbers, they must first be rounded down to 64 (or 32) bits, then the FPU performs operations, then produces 64 bit (or 32 bit) output. This is then stored in a 256 bit number. So, it might appear that the extra precision really isn't ever used.
Q: What is the point of the option "Allow multiple instances"
A1: I, unlike most people, have two soundcards, and enjoy playing multiple mpegs at once.
A2: My GUS Pnp can play 4 outputs at once, and I enjoy playing multiple mpegs at once.
Q: Why doesn't the volume control work on my system?
A: Your soundcard's driver is broken. Talk to your hardware vendor about having them fix it.
Q: The low quality spectrum analyzer leaves debris when I move around Winamp.
A: You probably have an ATI card with a buggy driver. Have them fix it.
Q: What are the little green and red dots next to the play icon?
A: They are supposed to be two lights, a green one and a red one. The green one is lit when synchronization is normal, and the red one lights up when synchronization is lost, i.e. when you are fast-forwarding or rewinding or when you have a corrupted mpeg. Also, this lights up at the end of the mpeg.
Q: Why does Winamp's memory usage appear to grow as an mpeg is played?
A: This is because Winamp uses memory mapped files to ease the decode process. Don't worry- Winamp isn't actually taking memory away from other applications, it's just using free memory, and will release memory to the system when another program needs it.
Q: Why doesn't Winamp load filenames with spaces from the Windows Shell correctly?
A: You need to register filetypes using the option in the preferences
Q: Why does Winamp skip when I scroll a window down in Netscape or Word, even though I have a P2-300?
A: Your video card is taking bus bandwidth from your soundcard, there is nothing that Winamp can do or could do. However, if your video card supports it, you can turn off "PCI Bus Retries" which will likely fix this problem.
Q: Winamp won't play this mpeg file that Winplay3 has no trouble on
A1: The
file is probably a MPEG 2.5 layer 3 file,
which is unsupported by Winamp because it
is proprietary to Fhg, the makers of
Winplay3. We'd like to support it, but
the specification isn't publically
avaiable.
A2: Otherwise, it is corrupted in some
way that makes it unreadable by Winamp.
We try to improve our synchronization
code as much as possible, but we can't
make it work 100% of the time.
Q: Wow! Why is Winamp's fast-forward and rewind so much faster than the other players?
A: Because we made it that way :)
Q: How can I find out about some of the little tips and tricks that make my use of Winamp more pleasurable?
A: Go to the about box (by clicking on the lightning-bolt or hitting F1), and go to the "Tips n bugs" section.
Great Leech sites. Not bad.... As it says, the links actually do work!
Still want more? Here are the Top Picks !
Click Here if u wanna buy the Real CD !
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Last update November 28, 1997