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Muzak Encoding at Home?

Posted by Cliff on from the better-elevator...music dept.

zonker asks: "I work for a company that requires Muzak to be played over the speaker system all day long. However, I work into the night, well passed closing time, and often just crank up my own tunes on a computer with a nice set of speakers. I've been curious if anyone has developed any software that allows you to encode and burn to whatever format Muzak is using to make their discs. I've scraped around the net and haven't seen anything like it other than other people in similar environments that would like to make their own Muzak discs for their own after hours enjoyment. That thread has some interesting informational tidbits for starters. Does anyone on Slashdot know anything more about this?"

8 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. easy fix by jacumba · · Score: 5, Informative

    years ago i had the same problem. here's how i solved the problem: the muzak system plugged into the overhead speakers w/ a standard headphone size connection. i created a male-to-male 1/8" headphone jack and plugged my portable cd player into it.

  2. Three sites that might help: by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Another discussion on this very topic- includes the potential dip switch settings to get MUZAK equipment to play Red Book CDs.

    The previous link led me to suspect Green Book as the format for Muzak. CD-Interactive Spec

    CD-I Bridge: A program that reads Green Book Formats

    So it looks to me like you have two options- fiddle with the dip switches to find a setting that will allow you to play Red Book CDs, or find a program that allows you to write CD-Interactive Green Book Format discs.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    1. Re:Three sites that might help: by Myself · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here's another CDFreaks thread that goes into a little more depth. The format is almost certainly CD-BGM, but all the authoring software is years old.

      Anyone who makes progress getting this stuff to run, let me know, it'd be great to carry a few "muzak that doesn't suck" CDs in the car at all times, and offer them to repressed workers in such environments. :)

  3. Literary References? by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 2, Informative

    All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.
    --Walter Pater

    The Condition of Muzak - Jeremiah Cornelius

    Thus, in a scene in Condition of Muzak (the end of the section called 'Outcast of the Islands'), there is a short discussion about the Japanese invasion of Australia and Jerry makes a reference to big egos and Hitler. Shakey Mo then asks if he was a character in a children's comic and then immediately asks if Hitler wasn't a police chief they'd met in Berlin. The first reference is to Big Ego (a cartoon ostrich in The Dandy or The Beano); the second reference is to an earlier story of mine (a 'key' story, in my view) called The Pleasure Garden of Felippe Sagittarius (where Hitler was a rather pathetic police chief in an imaginary Berlin), leading to a reference to the fact that the historical Adolf Hitler doesn't exist in this world.
    --Michael Moorcock

    --
    "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
  4. note to the "editors" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    well passed closing time

    The word you want is "past." Just because words sound the same doesn't mean you can switch them.

  5. Re:your problem by MrResistor · · Score: 2, Informative

    It is a company, but the term has also become synonymous with "elevator music". Basically they offer background music -- guaranteed to be prescreened, scrubbed of any hint of offensiveness, and utterly bland -- for "public" spaces such as elevators, department stores, lobbies, etc.

    --
    Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
  6. The problem with CD-i... by benjamindees · · Score: 3, Informative

    and the reason you won't find many tools to help you author them, is basically this:

    every CD-BGM disc also needs to include a CD-i application to allow for playback on a CD-i player.

    If you read the CD-i spec, you'll see that it's basically just a generic "autoplay" type of disc. In fact, it may not even be that generic. Apparently, the CD-i machine either runs the OS-9 realtime operating system (made by these guys) or it's loaded from the disc itself.

    So, to make your own discs, you need to add a software program (or maybe even an entire OS) along with the content.

    --
    "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
  7. Unfortunately.. by digitallystoned · · Score: 2, Informative

    I did work for Muzak's satellite division once. Depending on where you work, which really doesn't matter, this is a relatively simple fix. The speakers hook to some type of amplifier, which, in turn, has an 'input'. This 'input' is RCA, SO......Hook up your favorite CD player to the audio amp, (you may need a 1/8" jack to RCA adapter Y cable, Radio Shack, 5 bucks) and viola, the speakers now play your best of Cat Stephens record.