What is an mp3? 

Basically an mp3 is a highly compressed sound file, an excellent way of trading complete shows on the internet. The following is taken from the help files for the winplay3 mp3player:

About mpeg layer 3 encoding

Basic scheme: The ISO/MPEG Audio Coding Standard describes the compression of audio signals using high performance perceptual coding schemes. It specifies a family of three audio coding schemes, simply called Layer 1, Layer 2 and Layer 3.

Compression gain (Sound quality per bit) and encoder complexity increase from Layer 1 to Layer 3.

All Layers use the same basic structure. The coding scheme can be described as perceptual noise shaping or perceptual subband/transform coding.

The encoder analyses the spectral components of the audio signal by calculating a filter bank or transform and applies a psychoacoustic model to estimate the just noticeable noise-level. In its quantization and coding stage, the encoder tries to allocate the available number of data bits in a way to meet both the bitrate and masking requirements.

The decoder is much less complex. Its task is to synthesize an audio signal out of the encoded spectral components.

Compression rates:

You can achieve a compression rate of

1:4 with Layer 1 (or 192 kbps per audio channel),
1:6..8 with Layer 2 (or 128..96 kbps per audio channel), and
1:10..12 with Layer 3 (or 64..56 kbps per audio channel),

and the reconstructed audio signal will maintain a CD-like sound quality.

Q: That's fine and dandy, but why not post wavs? They sound good...
A: Because the files would be HUGE, and even if you managed to upload them to your newsserver without timing out, nobody would download them.

Do I need a special player to listen to mp3s?

Yes, there are nag-free shareware players available for all major operating systems. Links page has links for each one.  The more popular ones are:

Windows 95 - Winamp is hands down the best player available. It is available as nag free shareware.

Win 3.x - Winamp has a version for Win 3.x

Linux - X11 version of winamp for linux. It's still in beta, but seems to be pretty good.

Mac - MacAMP is the Winamp version for the Mac. 
Mac - SoundApp is regarded by some Mac enthusiasts to be the best application for mp3s.   It requires at least System 7.0, Apple's Sound Manager 3.1 or greater, the Drag Manager (aka Macintosh Drag and Drop, part of System 7.5) and at least a Macintosh with a 68020 or a Power Macintosh.

How do I make mp3s from tapes on a Mac?

How to Record your Casette's to Mp3 On A Mac (From Direwolf at Hotline)
1. You should have a computer that can record in 16 bit stereo at 44.1 Khz (almost any computer can do this - unless its rather old)
2. You need a cable to connect your tape deck to the computer, this cable is a : 1/8" stereo mini-jack to RCA connectors
(the 1/8" mini-jack (like a walkman jack) plugs into the mic port on your system and the RCA connectors go to the "right" and "left" channel outputs on your tape deck) -you can get this cable at any Radio Shack
3. Now you need a decent audio program to record the sound coming into your computer-for Mac's the most popular audio software is: Deck II or PEAK
4. With this software you will record an entire side of a cassette then edit this file into individual tracks (or songs).
*Note: you better have a large hard drive as 1 minute of music=10MB of disk space - so a 45 minute side of a cassette=about 450 MB
5. When you record an entire side of a cassette it becomes one LARGE file. Now with this large "master" sound file - you simply highlight the individual songs and "mix" (or save) it as a track.
6. You should save each song track as:
AIFF (format)
16 Bit stereo
44.1Khz (the sample rate- 44.1Khz is CD quality)
7. *Remember that these tracks (or songs) you are saving are in addition to the large "master"track. This means on your hard drive you will have a 450MB "master track" + another 450MB of "mixed" tracks ( or songs) - It is best just to record and edit one side of a cassette at a time , unless you have a gig's of hard drive space to play with.
8. When you have all your tracks saved as AIFF files you could then "burn" these files to a CD
and you could play that "killer" cassette on any audio cd player.
9. Or just use a utility (such as MPecker encoder) to encode your AIFF sound files to Mp3
format. MPecker is nice because you can "drag & drop" an entire CD worth of files into it
and it will encode and save each track in Mp3... (you dont have to baby-sit the process of
encoding all those tracks).
10. Thats it... its really easy and takes about 3 hours to do an entire cassette, depending on the speed of your computer.

How to make mp3's from tapes in Win 95/NT

Ingredients:
Cool Edit 96 from Syntrillum
SoloH Encoder (You can request it in the group)  This encoder is the best due to it's full spectrum processing(>17000hz). *stereo mini rig ("RCA to stereo mini" patch cord or "RCA to stereo mini" adapter)

*Spend those extra couple of dollars on gold-plated cables and adaptors. The gold plating itself does not actually make a noticable difference, but these cables tend to have much better shielding than cheap ones.

How to set up the connection from your deck to computer:
1. Connect the "line out" on your tape deck to the "line in" on your soundcard(back of the computer) using the stereo mini rig
2. Turn your speakers on and play a tape in the deck. If you hear the music then the connection has been made properly.
3. If you have a microphone hooked up to the computer it is best to unplug it.  At the very least, make sure it is turned off.

Making the .wav file -
(to do a whole 45 Minute side it is best to have at least 1 Gig of hard disk space)
1. Start Cool Edit 96
2. Click on File/New
3. Select 44100 sample rate, stereo and 16 bit resolution.
4. Click record in Cool Edit and hit play on your tape deck.
5. If you see no red in the boxes to the far right of the level meters then the recording was made properly then skip to #6.

otherwise...

you created distortion by having you level meters too high.  You can adjust recording levels by clicking on the little speaker (a.k.a. "volume control")right near the clock(a.k.a. the "system tray") on the grey strip that has the"Start" button on it (a.k.a. task bar) Click on Options/Properties. Click on the"recording" option in the "Adjust Properties" frame. Make sure that"Line In" is checked in the "Volume Control" listbox down below. Click on OK and adjust recording level/volume.
6. Stop the recording it's done.  If you choose, noise reduction should be performed at this point. 
7. To make the best sounding mp3 you need to"Normalize" the song. This maximizes the music/space ratio.
8. It is best to select the spot where you want the song to end. To do this select a small portion of the .wav and play it. Zoom in so you can see where it really ends. Click at the point where you want the song to end. Click "Full" view. Now move your mouse to the extreme left of the screen. Hold down Shift and click the left mouse button. Then click on Transform/Amplitude/Normalize.
9. Next step is to save this as a file. Click on File/Save Selection as a "WindowsPCM(.wav)" file.  I usually title using:
yy-mm-dd sxx songtitle
where:
 

This convention is used so that songs will be chronological when a directory is selected to play.  Using this format will accelerate production of "hot poop.".
10. Delete this portion of the .wav because it has been saved.
11. Repeat steps 8-9 until the whole .wav is saved/deleted.
12. Close down Cool Edit 96
Congratulations!! You have made the wav file.
NOTE: If you want to burn a CD, it is best to do it from this .wav file.  ".wav" files are the standard audio CD format.

Making the mp3 from the .wav file
1. Start SoloH
2. Select Frequency of 44,100 Hz
3. Select 256 Kbit/s for Bitrate
4. Select "Layer III" for Compression Layer
5. Navigate to the directory of your wav files and select a destination for the mp3s.
6. Select the files that you want to encode.

Important, before clicking on "encode":

• Disable the screen saver, as it eats a significant portion of your CPU time.
• Close all Explorer windows during encoding. If explorer is opened to your working directory, 20 to 30% of your CPU time will be wasted on Explorer updating its display continuously as the file grows. (The effect is less marked if Explorer is open to another window, but still present.) Minimizing will not help; you must close them.
• Make sure your browser is not open to a page containing animated GIFs. Again, minimizing will not help; you must close them.

7. Click Encode - wait for the mp3(s) to be created, it will take a long time
8. Exit SoloH
Congratulations!! You have made the mp3 file.

Cleaning up the directory and making the mp3 ID
1. Now you can delete that annoyingly huge wav file.
2. Open your newly created mp3 in Winamp and play it.
3. While it's playing edit it's ID(Alt+3), I usually try to put the Venue in the"Album" field and normally ID myself in the comment field.
4. Click on save to save the ID
5. Exit Winamp

Share your mp3 with the world and upload your creation to alt.binaries.gdead

How do I use noise reduction in Cool Edit?
Written up by The BongRipper (Simon's Method)

Caution: Never use noise reduction blindly; listen to "before" and "after" samples, and go back to the original unless there is a marked improvement.

My use of the NR in cool edit is limited, but as such, my technique is quite simple, so I will lay it out step-by step for you here:

1: Rip the wav (I do the whole tape side w/out breaking it, about 300+MB)

2: Without closing your wav (saving it is recommended at this stage), open a new instance of CoolEdit & rip a SMALL (10-15 sec) wav of BLANK leader from the tape you ripped the wav from (using the same recording settings as the large wav) there should only be noise on this wav, no audience, nuthin'.

3: Select entire wav (the short one)

4: Click Transform|Noise reduction, then click on the button "Get noise profile from selection", then save the profile as an .fft file identifying it with the specific show/tape.

5: Go to your original wav (the show wav) and again choose Transform|Noise reduction, (the whole wav should automatically be selected when you do this, but if it doesn't, then select all of it manually then go back into NR). Additionally, your noise profile should also be automatically loaded into memory; if not choose "load profile" &pick the profile you saved.

6: Select "OK", and the noise reduction begins. It takes me more than an hour& a half to NR a 40 - 45 min file (on a PII 266), but as you will hear, it's worth the wait!(Note: a 45 minute file on a P166MMX takes 2.5 hours)

7: when it's done, I cut the individual tunes off the large wav one after the other so that when I put it on a CD there are no noticeable breaks (when ripped w/"Disc-at-once" option in EasyCD), but I can still choose individual trax -pretty cool, eh?

That's all there is to it! have fun!

Simon's Method
1. Copy each side of the tape to one big wav using cool edit pro 1.1
2. Find a dead(pun definately intended) spot on the tape with nothing but the hiss.
3. Select the section and make a wav of that (should be at least 1/2 second)
4. Copy about 15 seconds of the beginning of a song to do NR testing with (choosing something where you can clearly hear the high-hats and cymbols)
5. Copy that wav a bunch of times so you can compare the different amounts of NR applied to the 15 sec wavs.
6. Click ctrl-A while viewing the noise wav and click transform>noise reduction>get profile
7. Save it as an .fft file (noise profile file)  (Note: Using the date in the format "yymmdd-description" will save you trouble later)
8. Apply the noise profile to the 15 second clips. One may vary the levels of NR under the graphical display.  There is a bar that you can slide left(lower) and slide right (higher). Leaving it set to its default tends to take too much off of the high end, so it is good practice to lower it. In order to compare the resulting waves, open up the different wavs with windows standard wav player, line them all up and you can easily compare them.
9. Apply the NR setting to the original wav by using Transform>Amplify>Normalize set to %99.  Finally, chop up the wavs to individual songs and make your mp3s.

This is an excellent trick to get cleaner sound.  Results usually sound much better compared to the analog tape source.

How do I encode songs that run together?
1. Select the first track (make sure you listen to how it will end and how the next track will begin, and write down the exact timing of what will be your edit point)
2. Normalized this wav
3. Chose to "save selection as.." filename.wav
4. Delete that section save the rest as filename2.wav
5. Repeat the above steps until the set is done...

How do I decode to .WAV using Winamp?
For Winamp 2.0 & up:
In WinAMP, go to Options|Preferences, then click on Audio I/O tab
Click drop down box next to "Output Plugins" field & select "Nullsoft Disk Writer Plug-In v0.95 (x86) (OUT_DISK.DLL)"
Click on "Configure" button & select the directory for your wav files.
Load your playlist or file, press play & wah-lah - wav files in your selected directory!
Before exiting WinAMP, change your output settings back to "Nullsoft Wave-Out Plug-In"

If you have acquired the VQF plugin for WinAMP, you can ALSO DECODE VQF's TO WAV - A LOT FASTER than with K-Jofol (which does it in real-time).

How do I hook up my computer to the stereo?
All you need is a stereo mini rig ("RCA to stereo mini" patch cord or "RCA to stereo mini" adapter)
1. Put the stereo mini end of the cable in the "line out" on your soundcard.  Place the RCA side of the cable to "ins" on the back of your amplifier.
2. Turn your speakers on and play any sound on your computer. If you hear the music then the connection has been made properly.

What is vqf?
vqf is a different format for audio files.  The best link for vqf is http://www.vqf.com

VQF supports a maximum bitrate of 96 kbps. As part of the MP4 standard, VQF is intended to replace MP3 at bitrates of 128 kbps and below.

A VQF @ 96 kbps sounds better than an mp3 @ 128 kbps, but not as good as an mp3 encoded at 192 or more kbps using SoloH.

Encoding a WAV to VQF/96 takes approximately twice as long as SoloH takes to encode the same WAV to mp3/256.

Decoding a VQF is slightly slower than decoding an mp3; VQFs can be played back reliably in realtime on a Pentium/150.

What is AAC?
AAC is an audio format offering approximately the same
bitrate-to-quality ratio as VQF, but it supports bitrates of up to 256
kbps. As part of the MP4 standard, AAC is intended to replace MP3 at
bitrates above 128 kbps.

Its drawback is that AAC software is still in its infancy, meaning not
optimized for speed, thoroughly tested for bugs or even fully
implemented with all intended features.

See also http://www.mp3.com/software/aac.html

What is shn/mkw?
shn is lossless compression for audiophiles. mkw is lossless compression also. These type of compression allow for digital clones.

A neat little app was created by Michael K Weise. This tool will convert between shn,wav,mp3 and mkw formats and it's all drag and drop! mkw Audio Compression can be found at http://home.att.net/~mkw/mkwact.html

For a Mac decoder, check out http://www.hornig.net/shorten.html

How do I decompress rar files?
RAR files are used to split a large file into smaller pieces. A link to the utility for decompressing these types of files can be found on the links page. Look for "WinRAR" in the left column.

FAQ maintained by SuperFreak