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Last Updated: Feb 18th, 2008 - 14:39:01 |
MP3's success rests on hardware players
MP3 is a technology with fantastic potential, most of it, alas, unrealized. You can download MP3 and VQF players from the Web, then download songs others have recorded – but you'll likely be participating in piracy if you do.
The best or at least most promising (ethical) application is recording your own CDs. You can store them on your hard disk and play them over your multimedia sound system while you work. You could also burn VQFs or MP3s - hundreds of them - on to a CD using a CD recorder.
The technology won't really break through, though, until the first hardware players become readily available.
Two Korean companies, DigitalCast Inc. and Saehan Information Systems Inc. have developed - or co-developed; it's not clear which - Walkman-style portable MP3 players.
They're palm-sized devices that play back MP3 files stored on 16, 32 or 64MB flash memory cards. They come with a docking station that allows you to download files from a PC. The 64MB version would give you about 2 ½ hours of MP3 music recorded at the highest - i.e. most CD-like - quality.
DigitalCast apparently showed its MPStation at Spring InternetWorld in Los Angeles in March and it has an English-language Web site advertising the product.
Proceed with caution
MP3.com lists nine other hardware MP3 players under development, some due out later this summer. But none is from a mainstream consumer electronics company.
CE vendors may not want to run afoul of the music industry the way DVD manufacturers did with the movie industry. The music industry should certainly be concerned about the increased threat of piracy posed by hardware MP3 players.
The movie industry threw up roadblocks to the introduction of DVD because of piracy concerns and managed to delay the introduction of that technology for several months and force manufacturers to include anti-piracy features.
There appear to be no VQF hardware players on the horizon. But it's interesting to note that VQF is from Yamaha, which of course also makes stereo equipment.
VQF, on the other hand, probably poses an even greater threat to the music industry given that it produces slightly better quality recordings than MP3.
Even without a dedicated hardware player, though, recording MP3s and VQFs will make sense to some music and PC enthusiasts. Here's how you do it:
Whichever compressed format you're going to use, it's essentially a two-step process.
You have to make a .WAV file for each track, an uncompressed digital audio file your PC can read. Then you convert it to MP3 or VQF format.
There are two basic ways to create the .WAV file, depending on whether you're starting with an analog source, such as a record or tape, or an audio CD.
You can make a digital recording from an analog source by running a cable from the tape-out jack on your stereo to the audio-in jack on your PC sound card.
You'll need a program that lets you set sound recording levels. If you record at too low a level, you'll hear a lot of background noise in the output. If you record at too high a level, you'll get ear-jarring distortion in peak-volume passages.
Recording from an audio CD is much simpler. You put the CD in your CD-ROM drive and transfer digital data directly from it to your hard drive.
So you have to use a CD ripper - a program that copies CD-A data from an audio CD to a .WAV file on your hard drive. Because this is an all-digital process, though, rippers supposedly make exact copies.
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