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As soon as you hook an 'MP3 Player' up to a quality playback system (somthing better than your PC speakers)

What makes you think that my sound card isn't plugged into a medium-high-end receiver and speakers?

it become obvious that it's 'way worse' not 'way better.'

NO. Tests performed by r3mix show that 192 kbps LAME encoded audio is transparent to the human ear. Your concept of "mp3" seems to be stuck at "128 kbps encoded with MusicTrash Jukebox".

lossy:

Conversion of the original analog sounds into 44.1 kHz stereo 16-bit linear PCM is itself lossy. Even conversion into 2.8 MHz stereo 1-bit PCM (Sony Super Audio CD) is lossy. It's a matter of how much loss you are willing to accept. For instance, the median *NSYNC fan wouldn't care if her copy of her favorite song was 64 kbps mono MP3.

Offer it in multiple different formats. Some Monkey's Audio for a lossless copy, some VBR MP3 encoded with LAME using the --r3mix tag, some Shorten lossless audio for those that prefer it, some OGG Vorbis for those that prefer the ultimate in open-source audio, and perhaps an AIFF. Makes sense to me.

Get a good receiver, no, your 79 dollar Aiwa system with blinky lights galore doesn't count, and some respectable speakers.

These guys did, and they found that LAME 3.92 can encode CD quality sound transparently at an average data rate between 160 and 192 kbps. For more information, read the "quality" section of r3mix.net.

You can definitely tell the mp3 artifacts

What artifacts? You mean the artifacts from the Xing encoder?

It seems the encoder I was using at the time (bladeenc) was inserting silence at the end of each mp3, to keep it to spec.

Dedicate one machine to running LAME on the audio, and you won't have this problem.

Even lame supports ogg coding through libogg.

merkac

The big question -- did you rip to uncompressed (.wav) files before encoding? And if so, did it have the aforementioned errors?

Make sure to try CD-ripping software with error correction.

I can't speak much for Linux (I only know of grip), but under Winblows try Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It's got great error correction settings and you can rip in essentially a paranoid mode if necessary.

If that doesn't help, try a different encoder. LAME comes highly recommended both from professional trials and from personal experience. Use the latest beta -- it's better than the "stable" release.

Sorry about this beinbg a long post, but I've done something similar to what I think you're asking about. I've set up an old Pentium 200 w/Linux 2.2.19, 128MB RAM, Ensoniq sound card, and 120GB of dedicated music storage, with...
(enters command)

thorin:/music$ find . -name '*.mp3' -o -name '*.ogg' | wc -l
12648

thorin:/music$

...mmm, alot of songs (900+ albums, yes I own all the CDs), organized by alphabetically by Artist/Album/Song. I use Edna(v0.3?) as the music web server to serve the music (hacked slightly to support .ogg files) on a 10/100Mb house LAN. Edna will allow selection of individual songs, pick from existing playlists, or dynamically generate a 'play all songs' playlist that works from the selected level down.
Any user at a client computer on the LAN can use their preferred browser to stream whatever music (album/playlist/song) they want to their local desktop. Windows clients currently are using Winamp, Linux clients are using XMMS, but any client with support for streaming mp3 and ogg files should work.
For MP3s I use ID3V2 tags because they work with streaming. The tags on the .ogg files seem to stream just fine. I use EasyTag to manage the ID3 tags on the MP3s. Of the TAG utilities I tried, I liked it the best for managing large numbers of MP3 files. I haven't yet found a comparable utility for managing OGG TAGs.
On the server itself, I use Konqueror pointed at the local Edna web server to pick playlists handled by XMMS via an Ensoniq sound card to the main stereo system. MP3s are encoded at a relatively high quality using LAME 3.89 in VBR mode with an average bit rate running about 190Kb/s. I'm currently re-encoding the music from the original sources into the ogg/Vorbis" format, using an average bit rate of 192Kb/s. I use GRIP to rip my CDs with (with full paranoia), and normalize to even out the volume variations of songs so that playlists with songs taken from different albums aren't at radically different volumes. There is a volume normalizing plugin for XMMS that adjusts the level in real time, but I didn't like the way it worked. The volume level of the next song was significantly different (louder) than the previous song, it could take a half second or so to adjust itself. Pre-normalizing (with conservative values) seems to work much better. The music currently occupies about 70GB of disk space.

BTW, my music server is what I use to rip/encode all of the new music, run setiathome, and function as a SAMBA file server/domain controller. It will do all that while streaming music to several clients as well as play through the local sound card without skipping. I discovered that if I used XMMS to read the MP3/OGG files directly from disk (on the server), I had problems with skipping when the server was heavily loaded, even with the XMMS buffers set to very high values, but clients on the LAN would never skip. Streaming to XMMS on the server solved that problem without resorting to the low latency patches for the kernel. On the Linux clients I setting my browser to launch xmms with the -e option which causes new songs or playlists selected with the browser to be appended to the current xmms playlist. ;-)

I don't know much about ogg, as I use mp3 for most of my music encoding. I've played around with various bit rates and finaly settled on what I felt was the best for me in terms of quality vs size.

I now encode all of my music at a variable bit rate 64-256kbps with lame. Lame 3.70 does a really good job of this and produces files (at least for the types of music I listen to) that sound very good. For the most part, they encode smaller than a 192kbps, as the average bit rate used is less. As a check, peeking at John Coletrane's Giant Steps, the average bit rate is right around 150. The bulk of my music averages between 160 and 192kbps.

The cool thing about vbr is that if the file needs more than that, is can use up to 256kbps to help make the harder to encode spots sound better. So I guess the worst case size you could get would be a song completely encoded at 256kbps (but I can't say that has ever happened).

I have a hard time telling these vbr 64-256kbps files apart from the orignal cd. Sometimes I can tell, but it is rare and difficult. However, IANAA (I am not an audiophile), so doing your own tests should help.

All of your standard tools should support vbr files. Xmms does a fine job. I did need to upgrade mpg123 to pre0.59s, however.

Anyway, consider vbr before you go straight to 300kbps.

Business card CDs can hold up to about 55 MB of data or almost 40 minutes of CD-quality audio[1] encoded with a good MP3 encoder, making them very useful for distributing a demo "tape." This new player should be able to play them just fine.

[1]Yes, 192 kbps MP3 encoded with LAME is CD-quality if you consider CD-quality to mean "capable of profound fidelity over 0-20 kHz" or "transparent to the human ear vs. stereo 16 bit per channel linear PCM." See also R3mix.net's "encoding" section.

no one is really into ... encrypting their band's music (since being noticed is what they *do* want)

If an independent band inserts .ogg files into Freenet and then publishes the KSK (or whatever Freenet retrieval keys are called) on its web site, bam! Instant legitimate use, and no more need for the Fraunhofer patent license required to get your work onto MP3.com. (LAME doesn't work for bands in countries that recognize Fraunhofer's patent on "coding an audio stream by doing a spectral transform on each block then allocating bits per frequency based on fixed sub-bands".)

However, this project would be in jeopardy if I did decide to use MP3 over Ogg Vorbis simply because the patent holders of the MP3 format could step in at any time and kill the MP3 libraries I use, kill the MP3 files I use, or even kill my project for using MP3s altogether.


It seems that the decoding libraries are pretty safe. From what I hear, they are protected by something (a loophole perhaps? I haven't checked, just heard from many library maintainers)


Howveer, the encoder and format arguments are still very valid. I used to help out with LAME and I remember when the Fraunhoffer (sp?) guys started putting the heavy on all the encoders. It was very scary how much power they could weild over something that was supposed to have so much "prior art".

Quite a difference between improving something and totally rewriting it, even if in the end no original code remains.

Like LAME? Like GNU itself? The GNU system is a piecewise reimplementation of the UNIX® system. Until the free Linux kernel came around, the GNU system (gcc, Emacs, bash, etc.) ran on top of proprietary UNIX systems (and free BSD systems). Even Richard Stallman supports using proprietary software and semi-free software "temporarily for the specific purpose of writing a free replacement for that very program."

MP3 is not MP3 - you can make good ones and bad ones, and it's easier to make a bad one than a good one, especially if you use many of the commercial all-in-one ripper/encoders. r3mix.net (http://www.r3mix.net if you like cut & paste) has some very interesting analyses of various MP3 codecs, and a link to a series of tests conducted by German magazine C't involving 300 listeners. Bottom line is, at high-enough bitrates most people can't hear the difference between CD and MP3. Now imagine how often people will pick the difference

- in less than ideal listening conditions - like through a Soundblaster card, or even the best "PC Speakers"
- using better options with better encoders (like LAME) (Fraunhofer "high quality" settings can be worse than "low quality"!)
- using the newer "Pro" standard

"But I can always tell the difference!"

Sure you can? Have you had someone prepare good MP3s for you and done a real blind test? Until then you only think you can tell. This is the point where fools stop reading - that is, "audiophiles" who think they know everything. As the Insanely Audiophile story showed, some people just like to spend money regardless of necessity.

"Ogg is better because..."

Great, choose it for your own recordings. The rest of the world, including me, will use what works everywhere - I won't be throwing away my mp3-only portable. I don't actually care how idealogically pure a codec is. Nobody says content protection is to come, only that it is possible. And even if it becomes possible that doesn't mean every MP3 (pro or otherwise) will become protected, only the ones you get from certain sources. If you're interested in creating copies of CDs you own, no problem. If you want to be a pirate, you're SOL and I have no sympathy. Enjoy your Ogg.

Once you accept the quality is there, you may as well make archival-quality MP3s of every CD you have and store those CDs somewhere where they won't take up so much space. Or, keep the CDs close by your CD player and enjoy great sound at work too.

Since when is it a copyright violation to possess mp3's of cd's I own?

It's not a copyright violation under 17 USC 107, as you mention. But it is a patent violation under United States law unless the encoder publisher has paid THOMSON multimedia $15K/year or $2.50/unit sold (whichever is greater). That means you, LAME users.

since most users won't have a compiler on their system, it shouldn't compromise "security" too much

The DOS and Windows versions of GCC are quite easy to install (unzip, set a couple environment variables in autoexec, reboot, and you can gcc files). Seeing as you have to compile your own MP3 encoder, I see the free DJGPP compiler gaining a wide userbase.

I propose that if there is a solution to this. Abolish all forms of MPEG format.

This could be a good thing for free software. Two words: Ogg Vorbis. Even the early beta encoders beat MP3 in quality at the same bitrate, and it's only going to get better. Recent LAME builds support encoding to both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats.

fly all the way to jupiter and still don't know how to use bladeenc

Better yet, use LAME Audio MP3 Encoder. Despite the name, it's reported to have better subjective quality than bladeenc. And if you can't figure out how to use it, here's a cheat sheet:

lame -h -v -m m rpws_010104.wav

I ran across this information while on the LAME page, which has as one of its goals a completely patent-free audio codec. Look here: to see some of the myriad patents on audio compression techniques.

<insert diatribe on how patents on intellectual property should be abolished, etc>

---

If you want mp3's of a CD you own, then download LAME and GRIP and make them yourself! It ain't hard. :)

------

It looks like PCs are hard to beat. Here's a claim of a Fraunhofer encoder at 10X real time on a 500 MHz Pentium3. Maybe it's vapor, but if it's real it's certainly a lot faster than LAME 3.87 (beta) when I tried it on a 800 MHz machine (Lame ran at approx 2X using "-V 3"). I recall hearing claims of LAME doing real time on a 266 MHz PC... maybe it does with different settings.

Someone please slap these stupid reporters that think anything mp3 is illegal.

At least LAME is illegal. MP3 the format is encumbered by patents. Software encoder developers must pay USD$15,000 for the first 6,000 units shipped yearly and USD$2.50 for each additional unit. Per-unit royalties are incompatible with free software. Switch to Vorbis today; most peer-to-peer file-sharing services support it now anyway.

And I've certainly dl'd MP3's over 56kbps.

But you can't create them in the United States and several other countries without buying licensed software from a software firm that pays the MP3 encoder software patent license royalties, which are currently USD$15,000 for the first 6,000 units shipped yearly and USD$2.50 for each additional unit. This is why official LAME binaries will not be released before around 2010 (good thing what happened to copyright duration hasn't (yet) happened to patent duration). BTW, to compile LAME on Win32, get GCC for Windows.

If you think licensing fees are the problem, it's time for you to upgrade.

I agree totally. After having upgraded from MP3 to OggVorbis, the only MP3 files I encode are Wrapster archives containing .ogg files.

I'll keep this comment within the context of music, mp3's, and CD's, rather then venturing off to the related DVD discussion. Traditionally, we receive our own personal copies of music in the form of CD or tape. CD's are really the only choice as a source for converting said music to mp3's. So, if we receive or music in CD format, and we have computers at our disposal with great encoding tools like Lame, BladeEnc, and algorithms like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis, why should we worry about the RIAA?

Seriously, folks. I don't see CD's dying any time soon, and by legal precedence, we have a right to make copies for ourselves or our friends. If this means burning new CD's or encoding an MP3, we have the right. Distributing said MP3's over the Internet may be another discussion, but actually encoding a song to MP3 format is NOT breaking the law. The RIAA is making the same old argument it always has, "We want control." In the end, common sense will hopefully prevail and once again quell the tantrums of the gorilla sized child.

the Reference Code (i.e. the patentable piece) has all been removed

Nope, sorry, reread the LAME page again:

"Personal and commercial use of compiled versions of LAME (or any other mp3 encoder) requires a patent license in some countries."

Still nailed by patents.

The MP3 Codec is propriatary. The patent holder, after years of not caring, is now demanding royalties from each and every use of MP3 technology, including a penny per download, and appear willing to demand that individual users accede to their licencing demands.

Actually the Code (ie Algorythm) that produced the MP3 formated file was what was patented. The format itself is an 'Open Standard' from the MPEG Group.

Yes but there is also L.A.M.E. which until recently was just a patch to the MP3 Reference Code (which was itself freely distributable) but all the Reference Code (i.e. the patentable piece) has all been removed and replaced with a free (speech/beer) MP3 Codec that the L.A.M.E. group has built.

I compared a few songs to the CDs I ripped them from (using the recommended settings of Joint Sterio where both frames are the same, and Variable Bit Rate encoding). The files were slightly larger then similar files I generated using a set '128k' bit size (5-6 meg instead of 4-5) but the sound difference was incredible. I was hard pressed to hear the difference between the CD and MP3 versions of the songs I used.

The main problem with MP3 isn't that the whole thing is propriatary, its that a Patented method was allowed to be used in the MPEG Group's Reference Code that was distributed to everyone so they could see how to impliment the standard. This allowed one unscrupulous company to demand royalties from people who thought they were using free code.

mpg123 sounds fine to me (although I'm not an audiophile), and it doesn't suffer from the Nitrane bug (see http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/winamp/winamp.html for details) that's cursed WinAmp for a long time now, making it painful to listen to any of my LAME-encoded MP3s...

MP3 is fully usable without any patents. The decoding process is completely patent free, and the superior LAME encoder does not use fraunhofer's patented method of encoding.

I'm sorry, you seem to miss the point.

If all you wanted was an encoding format, you can get that - eg here.

If what you want is the music, then fine, you can get that too.

If you want your music in MP3 format, you can by the CD and encode it, or get it here.

If you _don't_ want the music, then cool, no problem.

But, just because you have to change it from the format it's sold in, to the format you want to use it in does _not_ give you the right to steal.

Ever copied a CD to tape, to play in the car, or on a walkman? Amounts to the same thing.

By the CD, and use this.

or rather let the artists and the open source community work together to create a an electronic marketplace that does not involve the riaa.

MP3.com fits every aspect of your comment except the "open source" aspect, which cannot be filled legally until one of these happens:

• MPEG audio layer 3 patents run out around 2010, at which point LAME becomes non-infringing, or
• MP3.com begins offering .ogg (Vorbis codec) format audio files (which sound as good as a 50% higher bitrate .mp3).

Vorbis is a great idea, but it simply doesn't have the popularity or momentum of MP3.

Encode using LAME at 256 kbits. You can still fit 6-7 MP3 albums on 1 CD. At that bitrate I dare you to notice a difference between the original CD and the MP3 version, they sound absolutely identical to me.

Agreed. Actually if you use LAME's VBR (variable bitrate) capabilities, you get the best of both worlds. Sections that need it are encoded at a higher bitrate for quality and those that don't are encoded at a lower rate to save space. I've done this on my entire CD collection and usually end up with files that are about 30-40% larger than straight 128kbit/s mp3s.

Like you say though, I dare anyone to take a "blindfolded" test between this and the original and consistently identify both. I can definitely hear the difference in 128kbit/s files and it bugs me enough that I can't listen to most mp3s available on the web. I really hope VBR or at least a higher rate becomes more "standard" before major artists start putting their stuff out on mp3. It'd be a real shame if 128kbit/s is the best you can get when that happens.

LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."

That's only because MP3's lose quality, a lot. Well, at the standard 128k/s Try it. Get CD Paranoia for Linux or Exact Audio Copy for Windows. Get LAME to encode to MP3 for either platform. Encode to 128k/s. Now get a friend, or write a script, to randomly play the CD or MP3. I can tell the difference with junky computer speakers, forget about it on a stereo. 256k/s is much better, I've seen articles quote tests that no one can tell the difference.
-Hatta

The Mpeg Layer 3 format is freely usable by anyone.

No it can't; there's a USD 2.50 royalty per unit on encoders with a USD 15,000 per year minimum. For example, THOMSON multimedia already got BladeEnc to remove encoder binaries. And I heard they're going after LAME next.

You can hang it all together nicely with grip, too.

LAME Home Page

Grip home page

CDparanoia home page
--

Sorry, guys, the "Fundamental" is the Lowest frequency, not the highest. And MP3 doesn't delete high frequencies; it's much more subtle. Try out Lame in variable bit-rate mode, and you'll find the quality is pretty good.

Of course CD is better - it loses no info and has a high Nyquist frequency. But a sensibly high MP3 is pretty good.

I'd be interested in how you think LAME compares here. Could you post the samples you're talking about?

1) A lot of parties want desperately to make sure intermachine communication never becomes "protected". For example, making it a crime to snoop network traffic between personal (as in "not at work") computers. Traditionally, "pirates" made money selling bootlegs. It is a modern phenomena that freely traded software and music (no profit motive) has become a crime. After all, the radio stations pay a pittance (and they earn PROFITS) for the right to distribute music to millions of people. Trading all music freely, and boycotting CDs, is a great way to bring this issue to the forefront -- "Does the government, or any other entity, have the right to control the information passed between two privately owned personal computers?" I say no -- if they suspect a crime, they need a warrant, etc. This decision, one way or the other, will have to come about some day.

2) Western tradition has many instances of "The People" getting fed up with racketeering capitalistic monopolies and taking the law in their own hands. People like you say "Well, if someone rips you off, don't buy anything there--just turn your back". This action may be valid for you, but not necessarily for someone else. Our culture has a long history of hatred, violence and law-breaking in the name of freedom or just exhaustion from the "gutting" these (few?) renegade corporations do to us. I simply WILL NOT abide by the rules as laid down by the RIAA. In my opinion, they are a far more criminal organization than any person trading copyrighted CDs for free. By their actions, thay may set a precedent for legalized corporate intrusion to our personal computers -- machines with microphones, and sometimes cameras attached--that will take hundreds of years to roll back.

The goal, as I see it, is for intermachine communication, of a non-commercial nature, be as protected as speech. No intrusion, for any reason, without a warrant, on a case-by-case basis. Let Let Lars, Mustaine, Dre and the RIAA search door-to-door for all I care. They have to ask for permission to enter my house--at least through the door. They can get their fscking nose out of my network.

By the way, here's a great piece of art that sums up what the RIAA thinks of your freedoms.

Before using any lame or sulaco.org product, be careful to review the RIAA mp3 warning. It could save you from a MAJOR lawsuit.

To see just how bad the patent situation really is, try reading this page about all the patents standing in the way of a GNU patent-free codec. This page is linked right from the main LAME page, which says to me that a whole lot of posters here haven't done much looking at the LAME website.

Of course, Thomson does not require a royalty for mp3 Software Decoders/Players distributed free-of-charge via the Internet for personal use of end-users, so free (beer or speech) software is ok, but only for software distibuted free on the internet. Distributed on a cdrom (Redhat, Suse, etc) seems questionable.

Now after having read these pages, I'd be curious to know why so many people believe that the patents only apply to encoders. Please, please, please tell of a reliable source that shows the MP3 related patents are only for encoding. My email address appears above, with an obvious anti-spam word that you can easily remove.

MODERATORS: Please help dispell the misinformation about the applicability of the patents.

To see just how bad the patent situation really is, try reading this page about all the patents standing in the way of a GNU patent-free codec. This page is linked right from the main LAME page, which says to me that a whole lot of posters here haven't done much looking at the LAME website.

Of course, Thomson does not require a royalty for mp3 Software Decoders/Players distributed free-of-charge via the Internet for personal use of end-users, so free (beer or speech) software is ok, but only for software distibuted free on the internet. Distributed on a cdrom (Redhat, Suse, etc) seems questionable.

Now after having read these pages, I'd be curious to know why so many people believe that the patents only apply to encoders. Please, please, please tell of a reliable source that shows the MP3 related patents are only for encoding. My email address appears above, with an obvious anti-spam word that you can easily remove.

MODERATORS: Please help dispell the misinformation about the applicability of the patents.

Some synthesizers are called "programmable" with note sequences. Many can store their sequences in standard MIDI format (*.mid; *.kar; *.rmi). Tools like Timidity can "compile" these MIDIs into *.wav, and even a really lame encoder can "link" the results into "executable" MP3 files. So we have a "Program" that can be released under the GNU GPL; draw your own conclusions.

["The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost." -- Bennet Cerf]

I'm surprised that you are so manaical about your analog equipment, but are basically satisfied with BladeEnc. To me, BladeEnc at 128k distorts the music enough to detract from my listening enjoyment, and I can even hear the artifacts at 256k.

If you're going to be doing MP3 encoding at 128kbps, use LAME. LAME is without a doubt the best free MP3 coder in existence. The differences between LAME and BladeEnc at 128kbps are striking, and it's pretty close to Fraunhofer's quality.

I can hear distortion in 128kbps MP3's generated by LAME (and Fraunhofer, too, for that matter), but only if I listen. It's perfectly adequate for everyday listening. So I usually encode at 160kbps, at which point I cannot hear the difference. 160kbps also gets past the >16kHz cutoff of 128kbps MP3. (and here you are bitching about the loss of sound quality from the CD's 44.1kHz sampling rate!)

Based on listening to the CVS version a couple of weeks ago, I fully expect that the production version of Vorbis at 128k will be indistinguishable from CD's, perhaps with a few minor exceptions of difficult-to-compress passages.

And to address the main point of your posting, by all means get out there and push for Vorbis to be supported in all the cool places where MP3 is now. There are no compelling reasons not to, except for inertia. And the reasons to are, to me anyway, compelling. It simply sounds better, and it's totally free. If people are going to go around buying gold-plated speaker cables, you'd think being given a significantly better codec would be even more effective :)

I did some listening tests with the CVS version about two weeks ago, and compared it carefully against LAME and Fraunhofer's coder, respectively the best free and proprietary MP3 coders out there.

I listened to some regular music, plus the samples at the LAME website designed to stress MP3 coders to the max.

Basically, Vorbis blew the pants off MP3, with one exception - there are occasional artifacts audible in only one channel (Vorbis, at present, simply encodes each channel separately). Since these artifacts are way off center in the stereo field, they are particularly annoying. Monty claims that these artifacts are fixed in the new psychoacoustic module, and you know what? I believe him.

Keep in mind also that today's MP3 coders have years of tuning and tweaking behind them (Fraunhofer's coder of a few years ago did not sound that great, actually pretty far behind where LAME is now).

I encourage people not to just accept information that's spoon-fed them. It only takes a few hours to set up a simple listening test. Check out the code from CVS, put on your 'phones, and put it through its paces.

Advogato carried the interview with Monty a full week ago. I sent mail to roblimo, with whom I had been in correspondence. What's happened to Slashdot's speed lately?

Of course there are, just look at the docs for LAME. One (perhaps the only in common use) of the modes of joint-stereo mp3 encoding is mid-side stereo.

Here's my question. Can licenses be applied to patches?. One good example of this is the LAME Encoder. A little more background for those who don't know what it is. There is an ISO-based mp3 encoder, along with source code, that is freely available for download. The source code though, is heavily broken in many places, and the sound quality of a ISO-based mp3 encoder is very subpar compared to the commerical mp3 encoder of Fraunhofer, one of the leading companies behind the technology of mp3. However, Fraunhofer owns a lot of patents to the methods behind encoding mp3, so a couple of years ago, they decided to send legal threats everyone that offered a compiled version or modified version of the ISO-based encoder.

LAME, according to the homepage, is "not an mp3 encoder. It is a GPL'd patch against the dist10 ISO demonstration source. LAME is totally incapable of producing an mp3 stream. It is incapable of even being compiled by itself. You need the ISO source for this software to work. The ISO demonstration source is also freely available, but any commercial use (including distributing free encoders) may require a license agreement from FhG."

Here's my point - are patches covered under the GPL (or any license?). If yes, what's going to stop someone from creating a Artistic license patch for Linux the linux kernel? Or a Sun Community License? Or a completely proprietery license? Remember, what LAME does is GPL-infect a piece of code that is has no copyright on, simply by patching it. By extending this analogy a little further, you can see that there is no real need to respect the original author's copyright, since you can just patch his source code with whatever license you got.

So, the answer is yes, you can change the license - it's all too easy. But should it be this way?

Best encoder: gogo, or if you're not on x86, try lame.
Best ripper: cdparanoia.

I may be a little bit biased on the frontend market, but as the author of abcde I highly recommend it. :)

Oddly enough I posted this story last week but Slashdot ignored it..... Perhaps because I pointed out that the whole site is an exact carbon copy (check some of the html and layouts) of Myplay.com.

Myplay have been offering an online storage system like this for free for the last 4 months and they don't force you to use their technology, or limit you to streaming only.

So - for all you Unix users who don't want to cart a CD selection back and forth here's an online music HOWTO

(1) Get CD Paraoia or cdda2wav
(2) get LAME
( You can also get GRIP - that's a fancy GUI system that uses GTK - nice and easy)
(3) Extract your favourte CD audio to .wav files
(4) encode .wav files to .mp3 files using LAME
(5) Delete the .wav files

then....
(6) Get XMMS
(7) Listen to your funky mp3's


Now for the anytime/anywhere part....
(8) go to Myplay.com
(9) Get an account (they're free)
(10) upload your chosen tracks
(11) Listen to them wherever you go


okokok but there's more

If you want to show off your music taste you can assemble your favourite tracks into public playlists which anybody can listen to - so it's like creating a radio show. (they use icecast for this BTW)

Plus they've also got a few free tracks, both from themselves and from affiliates like emusic.com....


SO.... my.mp3.com is not Innovative... it's a copy.

So - why isn't myplay in the related links box?