The Linux MP3-HOWTO

The Linux MP3-HOWTO
By Phil Kerr, [email protected]
v1.40, April 2000

This document describes the hardware, software and procedures needed
to encode, play, mix and stream MP3 sound files under Linux.
______________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents

1. Introduction.

2. Copyright of this document.

3. Where to get this document.

3.1 Translations

4. Acknowledgments.

5. Disclaimer.

6. Hardware Requirements & Performance Issues.

7. Software Requirements.

7.1 Rippers & WAV Recorders
7.2 Encoders
7.3 Players
7.4 Streaming Servers
7.5 Mixing
7.6 Misc

8. Setting up your system.

8.1 Setting up for Analogue Audio Capture
8.2 Setting up for CD-ROM Audio Capture
8.3 Additional Setting up

9. Encoding from Audio.

10. Encoding from CD-ROM.

10.1 Command Line encoding
10.1.1 RipEnc
10.2 GUI Based Encoders
10.3 Encoder Performance

11. Streaming MP3's

11.1 Icecast
11.1.1 Shout
11.1.2 LiveIce
11.2 Fluid
11.3 Bandwith considerations
11.4 Copyright Issues

12. Listening to MP3's.

12.1 Playing from File
12.2 Playing from MP3 Streams
12.3 Mixing
12.3.1 eMixer

13. Feedback.

______________________________________________________________________

1. Introduction.

This document describes the hardware, software and procedures needed
to encode, play, mix and stream MP3 sound files under Linux.

It covers:

Encoding MP3's from a live or external source.

Encoding MP3's from audio CD's.

Streaming MP3's over a network.

Listening to MP3's.

Mixing MP3's

2. Copyright of this document.

This HOWTO is copyrighted 2000 Phil Kerr.

Unless otherwise stated, Linux HOWTO documents are copyrighted by
their respective authors. Linux HOWTO documents may be reproduced and
distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic,
as long as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial
redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the author would
like to be notified of any such distributions.

All translations, derivative works, or aggregate works incorporating
any Linux HOWTO documents must be covered under this copyright notice.
That is, you may not produce a derivative work from a HOWTO and impose
additional restrictions on its distribution. Exceptions to these rules
may be granted under certain conditions; please contact the Linux
HOWTO co-ordinator at the address given below.

In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through
as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright
on the HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to
redistribute the HOWTOs.

If you have questions, please contact Tim Bynum, the Linux HOWTO co-
ordinator, at [email protected] via email.

3. Where to get this document.

The most recent official version of this document can be obtained from
the Linux Documentation Project <http://www.linuxdoc.org/>.

The homepage for this HOWTO is: <http://www.mp3-howto.com>

3.1. Translations

This HOWTO has been translated into the following languages:

Please note that translations may be slightly out of date from this
document as, naturally enough, the translations take time.

Korean

<http://kldp.org/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO> By Lee,So-min <[email protected]>

French

<http://www.freenix.org/unix/linux/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO.html> By Arnaud
Gomes-do-Vale <[email protected]>

Hungarian

<http://free.netlap.hu/howto/MP3-HOGYAN.html> By Andras Timar
<[email protected]>

Italian

<ftp://ftp.pluto.linux.it/pub/pluto/ildp/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO> By Mariani
Dario <[email protected]>

Spanish

<http://www.insflug.org/documentos/MP3-Como> By Arielo
<[email protected]>

Dutch

<http://nl.linux.org/doc/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO-NL.html> By Reggy Ekkebus
<[email protected]>

Japanese

<http://www.linux.or.jp/JF/JFdocs/MP3-HOWTO.html> By Saito Kan <can-
[email protected]>

Many thanks to the above translators. If you can translate this
HOWTO, please drop the author an email. Also please state the URL
where the translation will be housed.

4. Acknowledgments.

In writing this HOWTO I have had to draw heavily on the Sound-HOWTO By
Jeff Tranter, and the Sound-Playing-HOWTO By Yoo C. Chung.

Thanks also to the other HOWTO authors whose works I have referenced:

Linux System Administrators Guide By Lars Wirzenius.

Linux Network Administrators Guide By Olaf Kirch.

Multi Disk System Tuning HOWTO By Stein Gjoen.

Also a big thank-you to all who have sent in feedback, comments and
bug-reports.

Special thanks to all my colleagues at WebSentric AG, especially Mark
S. Fischer & Peter Conrad for their comments, feedback and support.

5. Disclaimer.

Use the information in this document at your own risk.

I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this document.

Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document
is entirely at your own risk.

All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted
otherwise.

Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the
validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as
endorsements.

You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before
major installation and backups at regular intervals.

6. Hardware Requirements & Performance Issues.

Digital Audio processing is a resource intensive task that relies
heavily on the processing and I/O capabilities of a system. I would
strongly recommend a Pentium class machine as a minimum.

If you are going to be encoding from an analogue audio source via the
line or microphone input, a PCI soundcard will give the best results.
The I/O performance difference between an ISA and PCI based card is
significant, over 132 MBytes/sec for PCI (quote taken from the PCI-
HOWTO). Naturally, the better the quality of the soundcard in terms
of its signal-to-noise ratio, the better the encoded MP3. I've been
using the Soundblaster PCI128 and just switched over to a Soundblaster
Live Value; both cards give good audio performance, but the Live has
significantly better S/N ratios, good enough for semi-pro audio work.
Remember the old data processing maxim:- garbage in - garbage out!

Creative have a Beta driver for the Soundblaster Live! which can be
downloaded from:

<http://developer.soundblaster.com/linux/>

When recording analogue audio to a hard disk, more commonly referred
to as direct to disk or d2d recording, the performance of the disk,
and its interface is critical. If you are using an IDE based based
system, mode 4 or UDMA is preferable as the transfer rate is
sufficiently high enough to provide reliable data transfer without
problems.

The ideal solution would be to use a SCSI based system as the drives
and interface have far better throughput capabilities, a sustained
5mbits/sec for SCSI 1 through to 80mbits/sec for ultra/wide SCSI. IDE
can peak at anything from 8.3 MB/s to 33 MB/s for Ultra-ATA but these
speeds are peak, average transfer rates will be slower. If you can
find, or afford, an AV SCSI drive, go for it. AV drives have had the
read/write head system optimised for continuous data transference;
other SCSI and IDE drives normally cannot sustain continuous data
transfer as the write head heats up!

Naturally a drive that has cache will give more consistent results
than one that doesn't, as the cache will act as a buffer if the heads
do lift or it cannot handle the throughput.

If your drive isn't up to spec, your recording will suffer from
dropouts and glitches, where the drive failed to record the signal.
If you are recording one-off events, such as live performances invest
in a good SCSI based disk system.

Another cause of d2d dropouts is a heavily loaded system. Background
tasks can cause the system to momentarily glitch. Its recommended to
run as few background services as you can, especially networked based
services. For more information about setting network services, and
startup scripts please refer to the SAG and NAG guides.

Virtual memory paging will also cause glitches, so run with as much
physical RAM as you can, I'd recommend at least 32 Mb, but you may
well need more.

For those wanting to extract the most out of their system, optimising
the kernel probably wouldn't do any harm either.

While the hardware specifications above will give you a decent system
to encode audio data, don't discount using older, lower spec kit if
that's all you have access to.

It'll be a good challenge for a sys-admin to tweak a low-spec system
to give good results, and the end result will probably be a happier
Linux box.

Another important issue is the audio cabling. Cheap, poor quality
cables and connectors will result in poor recording quality. If your
soundcard has the option to use phono, sometimes referred to as RCA
connectors, use them. Gold plated contacts will also help maintain
audio quality, as will keeping audio cables away from data cables as
there will be a chance of interference between them.

But don't forget, spending a fortune on the best audio cabling will be
lost if the rest of the system hasn't been optimised.

For encoding MP3's from CD-ROM, the speed or type of drive will
determine the time taken to read the raw information from it. A
single speed drive will probably be too slow for all but the most
patient.

Your CD-ROM must be connected to your soundcard if you want to hear
what you are recording, either using the internal connector or by
connecting headphone's to the headphone output, although you will not
be able to listen to MP3's through the CD-ROM headphone socket!

For detailed instructions on setting up soundcards, now would be an
excellent time to read the Sound-HOWTO.

7. Software Requirements.

Converting audio to MP3's is normally a 2 stage process, first the
audio is recorded into a WAV format, then the WAV is then converted
into an MP3. Some utilities will do both processes in one go for you.

The format you wish to encode audio from, CD or direct audio, will
determine what software tools you need to produce the WAV file.

If you are wanting to encode from audio input, you will need a program
that will record from your soundcard's input and save the results in a
WAV format. Below are some useful utilities (most of the comments are
taken from the respective website of the app.)

7.1. Rippers & WAV Recorders

To grab from analog audio line-in. Wavrec

Wavrec is distributed as part of wavplay, which can be downloaded
from:-

<ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/players/>

To convert CD audio data to WAV format, sometimes known as CD ripping:

CDDA2WAV

<http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/cdrom/>

Cdparanoia

Cdparanoia is a Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA) extraction tool,
commonly known on the net as a 'ripper'. The application is built on
top of the Paranoia library, which is doing the real work (the
Paranoia source is included in the cdparanoia source distribution).
Like the original cdda2wav, cdparanoia package reads audio from the
CDROM directly as data, with no analog step between, and writes the
data to a file or pipe in WAV, AIFC or raw 16 bit linear PCM. Compared
to cdda2wav, it's much slower but really gets the best results you can
get even from CDs that are difficult to rip for scratches or other
read-errors.

<http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/index.html>

RipEnc

RipEnc is a bourne shell script frontend to Cdparanoia, cdda2wav,
tosha and Bladeenc, 8hz-mp3, l3enc. It utilizes CDDB lookups to
automate the naming of songs as they are ripped. A manual naming
option is also available. The entire CD can be ripped or you can pick
the songs to rip. ID3 tags are also supported.

<http://www.asde.com/~mjparme/index.htm>

RipperX

RipperX is a GTK program to rip CD audio and encode mp3s. It has
plugins for cdparanoia, BladeEnc, Lame Mp3 encoder, XingMp3enc, 8hz-
mp3, lame, and the ISO v2 encoder. It also has support for CDDB and
ID3 tags.

<http://www.digitallabyrinth.com/linux/ripperX/>

Grip

Grip is a GTK-based CD-player and CD-ripper/MP3-encoder. It has the
ripping capabilities of cdparanoia built in, but can also use external
rippers (such as cdda2wav). It also provides an automated frontend for
MP3 encoders, letting you take a disc and transform it easily straight
into MP3s. The CDDB protocol is supported for retrieving track
information from disc database servers. Grip works with DigitalDJ to
provide a unified "computerized" version of your music collection.

<http://www.nostatic.org/grip/>

7.2. Encoders

To convert the WAV file to MP3 format you will need an encoder:

Blade's MP3 Encoder

BladeEnc is a freeware MP3 encoder. It is based on the same ISO
compression routines as mpegEnc, so you can expect roughly the same,
or better, quality . The main difference is the appearance and speed.
BladeEnc doesn't have a nice, user-friendly interface like mpegEnc,
but it is more than three times faster, and it works with several
popular front-end graphical user interfaces.

<http://bladeenc.cjb.net>

Lame

In the great history of GNU naming, LAME stands for LAME Ain't an Mp3
Encoder. LAME 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 (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Germany).

<http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/>

Gogo

This is a very fast MP3 encoder for x86-CPU, which is based on LAME
ver 3.29beta and optimized by PEN@MarineCat, Keiichi SAKAI, URURI, kei
and shigeo. (You will also need to download NASM to compile the
source, which can be found <http://www.web-sites.co.uk/nasm/>)

<http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html>

7.3. Players

To play the MP3's you will naturally need a player:

Xmms (Formerly known as X11Amp)

This player has most of the features as Winamp from Windows 95/98/NT
but it will of course feature some specials only available for the
linux version.

<http://www.xmms.org>

Xaudio

Xaudio is a very fast and very robust multiplatform solution for
Digital Audio playback, especially targeted at MPEG Audio (MP1, MP2
and MP3) decoding.

<http://www.xaudio.com>

AlsaPlayer

AlsaPlayer is a new type of PCM player. It is heavily multi-threaded
and tries to exercise the ALSA library and driver quite a bit. It has
some very interesting features unique to Linux/Unix players. The goal
is to create a fully pluggable framework for playback of all sorts of
media with the focus on PCM audio data. Full speed (pitch) control,
positive *and* negative! First Linux- and only GPL player that does
this!! MP3's and CD's do varispeed :)

<http://www.alsa-project.org/~andy/>

mpg123

What is mpg123? It is a fast, free and portable MPEG audio player for
Unix. It supports MPEG 1.0/2.0 layers 1, 2 and 3 (those famous "mp3"
files), and it has been tested on a wide variety of platforms,
including Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, SunOS, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX and
others. For full CD quality playback (44 kHz, 16 bit, stereo) a
Pentium (or fast 486), SPARCstation10, DEC Alpha or similar CPU is
required. Mono and/or reduced quality playback (22 kHz or 11 kHz) is
even possible on slower 486 CPUs.

<http://dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de/~olli/mpg123/>

Freeamp

FreeAmp is an extensible, cross-platform audio player. It features an
optimized version of the GPLed Xing MPEG decoder which makes it one of
the fastest and best sounding players available. FreeAmp provides a
number of the most common features users have come to expect in a
clean, easy to use interface.

<http://www.freeamp.org/>

7.4. Streaming Servers

Streaming servers allow you to 'broadcast' MP3's across a network,
whether this is your intranet or the internet itself.

Icecast

Welcome! icecast is a Mpeg Layer III Audio broadcasting system brought
to you by the linuxpower.org team. Icecast comes bundled with
iceplay, and icedir. iceplay is a playlist streamer that will allow
you to send pre-encoded files to your icecast server.

<http://www.icecast.org/>

Fluid

Fluid Streaming Server is a program for streaming media over networks
and in its current form using the mp3 format.

<http://www.subside.com/fluid/> (old site)
<http://fluid.sourceforge.net/> (new site)

7.5. Mixing

LiveIce

LiveIce is the source client for Icecast which encodes an mpeg stream
for broadcast as it is created. Unlike clients such as Shout and IceDJ
this permits the broadcast of live audio, rather than prerecorded
mp3's.

LiveIce is bundled with Icecast, newer versions together with
documentation may be found at the website below:

<http://star.arm.ac.uk/~spm/software/liveice.html>

eMixer

eMixer is an easy-to-use front-end to mpg123 that allows you to play
and mix two mp3 streams together. The ability to mix two mp3s makes
eMixer act like a cross-fader, effectively giving the user DJ-like
capabilities from the computer console. eMixer is also very able in a
"real time" party environment. eMixer is based on the original mp3
mixing code upon which liveice's mixing component is built.

<http://emixer.linuxave.net/>

7.6. Misc

Volume normalization

Wavnorm

If you have encoded live audio, or have encoded from older cd's you
may find variations in the overall sound level.

To change the encoded volume levels of the MP3's you will need to
normalise them using wavnorm.

<http://www.zog.net.au/computers/wavnorm/>

Sox is a very handy sound conversion utility which I'd recommend
having, and you will need it if you wish to use wavnorm.

<ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/sound/convert/>

You may also need a mixer program; Xmixer works well and is included
with most distributions.

8. Setting up your system.

This section will describe the basics of setting up your Linux system
to record audio from either an analogue or CD-ROM source.

I'm basing this section around my Intel based Linux system which is
running Redhat, but should be reasonably distribution neutral. I'll be
working on the Sparc platform version shortly. (if you have any
success in using this HOWTO on other hardware, please get in touch).

Naturally a reasonable prerequisite is a working soundcard. At this
point in the HOWTO, I invite you to read the excellent Linux Sound
HOWTO, by Jeff Tranter. After which a good read of the Linux Sound
Playing HOWTO, by Yoo C. Chung. Both of the above mentioned HOWTO's
cover the details of getting a sound system working under Linux far
better than I could.

8.1. Setting up for Analogue Audio Capture

Firstly, set up your audio. There are a multitude of ways to route
audio before it gets to your Linux box, some common ones are:

Line out to Soundcard Line in. Most audio devices have a Line output
sockets. Line level is a standard that specifies what voltage the
audio device will send out. If I remember correctly it is 500mV for
domestic and Semi Pro devices, and 750mV for Pro audio devices. I
would guess that the standard set for most soundcards will be 500mV,
but some of the newer Pro audio may be to the higher standard It
shouldn't make too much difference unless you are recording at very
high levels.

The Line level output is normally used to connect HI-FI equipment to
an amplifier, so things such as Tape Decks, Radio Tuners, CD players,
DAT machines and Mini-Disc players should connect without problem.
Turntables can be more of a problem, see below for more information.

You could capture audio from VCR's as well. Most VCR's will either
have Line out for sound, or you can Get a Line out from a SCART socket
if your VCR has one.

Amplifier Tape out to Soundcard Line in, Soundcard Line out to
Amplifier Tape in. This configuration is essentially replacing a
traditional tape recorder connected to your HI-FI amplifier with your
Linux system. The Soundcard Line out to Tape in allows monitoring of
the recording levels.

Mike to Soundcard Mike in. The voltages generated by microphones is
very much smaller than those used in Line level devices. If you were
to plug a Microphone into the Soundcard Line in, chances are you would
never record anything.

WARNING, doing the reverse, plugging a Line level device into the
Soundcards Microphone input, can damage your soundcard!!

Turntable to Mike in.

Many thanks to Mark Tranchant for the following.

The raw output from a record deck cartridge is very low level.
However, you cannot plug it directly into a microphone input and
expect good results. The output requires equalization, as records are
mastered with less bass and more treble to optimize the physics of the
moving needle. This equalization is carefully defined and referred to
as RIAA equalization. You *need* to run the output through a phono
preamp first, and then into a line input.

Music keyboards & synths should be connected to the Soundcards Line
in, with guitars connecting to Line in via a DI (Direct Injection,
used to convert the signal to Line level) box.

Before you plug in anything into your soundcard, make sure the volume
levels are turned down to minimum, or if using microphones they are
either turned off or away from speakers.

8.2. Setting up for CD-ROM Audio Capture

Setting up your Linux system to extract audio data from CD-ROM is
reasonably straight forward.

If you can hear a track playing from your CD-ROM through your speakers
or amplifier, connected to your soundcard, then there's a reasonable
chance you should be able to record from it.

8.3. Additional Setting up

Log in as per normal to your system, then using a mixer program set
the recording levels that are loud enough to give you a decent
recording level, but aren't too loud and distorting. I normally just
judge this by ear, after a while you'll get to know what levels are
best for your kit.

I recommend either turning off all unnecessary services or switching
to the single user runlevel, especially when encoding from an audio
source. This is to ensure that the bare minimum of services are
running and thus minimising system glitches when recording.

I've set up a separate SCSI drive, exclusively to record the audio to,
which I'll refer to as /mp3. I've done this mainly for the
performance gains in using a SCSI drive. Also, recording onto a
dedicated drive, where you are almost certain the head isn't going to
suddenly skip to another part of the drive as you are writing audio
data to it, is a good thing :)

For details on setting up a Linux system with multiple disk drives, a
good read of the Multi-Disk-HOWTO, by Stein Gjoen may be useful.

9. Encoding from Audio.

Firstly, make sure you have enough space on your drive. At CD
quality, 44.1 Khz 16 Bit stereo, 1 minute takes nearly 10 Mb (5 MB per
channel).

I normally record at DAT quality, which is 48 Khz 16 Bit stereo.

Using wavrec I use the following syntax:

/usr/local/bin/wavrec -t 60 -s 48000 -S /mp3/temp.wav

The first part is an explicit path to wavrec. The '-t 60' specifies
the length of time to record for, in seconds.

The third option, -s 48000 refers to the sample rate in samples/sec.
(48000 is the rate for DAT, 44100 is CD)

The last option is the path to the output file.

To see the full set of options, run waverec -help, or see it's man
page.

This will produce your WAV file Next you will need to encode it into
MP3 format.

Use bladdenc with the following command line.

/usr/local/bin/bladeenc [source file] [destination file] -br 256000

The -br option sets the bit rate, in this case I've set the rate to
the maximum rate of 256k bits/s. The path to bladeenc may also be
different on your system to the one I've used in my example.

To see the full set of options, run bladeenc -help, actually this is
an invalid option, but will display the list of options.

The same encoding using Lame (as well as Gogo as it is based on Lame)
would need the command line

/usr/local/bin/lame [source file] [destination file] -b 256

10. Encoding from CD-ROM.

In a similar way to encoding from audio, encoding from CD is a 2 stage
process. Firstly the audio data is extracted from the cd and
converted into a wav file. Then the wav file is converted into MP3.

There are basically 2 types of encoders, console based and X based.
Both do the same job, but the X based are easier to use (and look
nicer).

Again, before you start to encode, check you will have enough drive
space on your system.

10.1. Command Line encoding

I've written a very simple Perl script that will rip and encode tracks
from a CD.

______________________________________________________________________
#!/usr/bin/perl

if ($ARGV[0] ne "") {

$count = 1;

do {

$cdcap = system("cdparanoia", $count, "/mp3/cdda.wav");
$track = "$ARGV[1]/track".$count.".mp3";
$enc = system("bladeenc /mp3/cdda.wav $track -br 256000");
$count++;

}
until $count > $ARGV[0];
exit;
}

else {
print "Usage cdriper [no of tracks] [destination directory]\n\n";
}
______________________________________________________________________

Please note: The above script is very basic and has nothing fancy,
like error checking or CDDB. Improve at your leisure :)

The main lines of interest are:

______________________________________________________________________
$cdcap = system("cdparanoia", $count, "/mp3/cdda.wav");
______________________________________________________________________

This line calls the CD ripper, cdparanoia. Cdparanoia converts raw CD
audio data to WAV format.

I'm using Cdparanoia, but if you wish to use CDDA2WAV, the command
line would be:

______________________________________________________________________
$cdcap = system("cdda2wav", $count, "/mp3/cdda.wav");
______________________________________________________________________

The salient options are $count, which is the number of tracks to rip,
and then the path for the outputted WAV file. In my example this will
go to a tmp directory on my MP3 SCSI drive.

The WAV file is then converted into a MP3 file using Bladeenc.

I've written this Perl script in order to rip a CD without having to
rip and encode each track, and without having to use the batch mode of
Cdparanoia. This cuts down on free disk space needed as Cdparanoia's
batch mode will rip the whole disk, and take up anything upto 600 Meg.

If you wanted to use Lame or Gogo, replace the encoder line with:

______________________________________________________________________
$enc = system("lame /mp3/cdda.wav $track -b 256");
______________________________________________________________________

or

______________________________________________________________________
$enc = system("gogo /mp3/cdda.wav $track -b 256");
______________________________________________________________________

Here is a dump of the available option for each of the encoders.

Bladeenc

______________________________________________________________________
BladeEnc 0.91 (c) Tord Jansson Homepage: http://bladeenc.mp3.no
===============================================================================
BladeEnc is free software, distributed under the Lesser General Public License.
See the file COPYING, BladeEnc's homepage or www.fsf.org for more details.

Usage: bladeenc [global switches] input1 [output1 [switches]] input2 ...

General switches:
-[kbit], -br [kbit] Set MP3 bitrate. Default is 128 (64 for mono output).
-crc Include checksum data in MP3 file.
-delete, -del Delete sample after successful encoding.
-private, -p Set the private-flag in the output file.
-copyright, -c Set the copyright-flag in the output file.
-copy Clears the original-flag in the output file.
-mono, -dm Produce mono MP3 files by combining stereo channels.
-leftmono, -lm Produce mono MP3 files from left stereo channel only.
-rightmono, -rm Produce mono MP3 files from right stereo channel only.
-swap Swap left and right stereo channels.
-rawfreq=[freq] Specify frequency for RAW samples. Default is 44100.
-rawbits=[bits] Specify bits per channel for RAW samples. Default is 16.
-rawmono Specifies that RAW samples are in mono, not stereo.
-rawstereo Specifies that RAW samples are in stereo (default).
-rawsigned Specifies that RAW samples are signed (default).
-rawunsigned Specifies that RAW samples are unsigned.
-rawbyteorder=[order]Specifies byteorder for RAW samples, LITTLE or BIG.
-rawchannels=[1/2] Specifies number of channels for RAW samples. Does
the same as -rawmono and -rawstereo respectively.

Global only switches:
-quit, -q Quit without waiting for keypress when finished.
-outdir=[dir] Save MP3 files in specified directory.
-quiet Disable screen output.
-nocfg Don't take settings from the config-file.
-prio=[prio] Sets the task priority for BladeEnc. Valid settings are
HIGHEST, HIGHER, NORMAL, LOWER, LOWEST(default) and IDLE
-refresh=[rate] Refresh rate for progress indicator. 1=fastest, 2=def.
-progress=[0-8] Which progress indicator to use. 0=Off, 1=Default.

Input/output files can be replaced with STDIN and STDOUT respectively.
______________________________________________________________________

Lame

______________________________________________________________________
LAME version 3.50 (www.sulaco.org/mp3)
GPSYCHO: GPL psycho-acoustic model version 0.74.

USAGE : lame [options] <infile> [outfile]

<infile> and/or <outfile> can be "-", which means stdin/stdout.

OPTIONS :
-m mode (s)tereo, (j)oint, (f)orce or (m)ono (default j)
force = force ms_stereo on all frames. Faster and
uses special Mid & Side masking thresholds
-b <bitrate> set the bitrate, default 128kbps
(for VBR, this sets the allowed minimum bitrate)
-s sfreq sampling frequency of input file(kHz) - default 44.1
--resample sfreq sampling frequency of output file(kHz)- default=input sfreq
--mp3input input file is a MP3 file
--voice experimental voice mode

-v use variable bitrate (VBR)
-V n quality setting for VBR. default n=4
0=high quality,bigger files. 9=smaller files
-t disable Xing VBR informational tag
--nohist disable VBR histogram display

-h use (maybe) quality improvements
-f fast mode (low quality)
-k disable sfb=21 cutoff
-d allow channels to have different blocktypes
--athonly only use the ATH for masking

-r input is raw pcm
-x force byte-swapping of input
-a downmix from stereo to mono file for mono encoding
-e emp de-emphasis n/5/c (obsolete)
-p error protection. adds 16bit checksum to every frame
(the checksum is computed correctly)
-c mark as copyright
-o mark as non-original
-S don't print progress report, VBR histograms

Specifying any of the following options will add an ID3 tag
--tt <title> title of song (max 30 chars)
--ta <artist> artist who did the song (max 30 chars)
--tl <album> album where it came from (max 30 chars)
--ty <year> year in which the song/album was made (max 4 chars)
--tc <comment> additional info (max 30 chars)

MPEG1 samplerates(kHz): 32 44.1 48
bitrates(kbs): 32 48 56 64 80 96 112 128 160 192 224 256 320

MPEG2 samplerates(kHz): 16 22.05 24
bitrates(kbs): 8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 80 96 112 128 144 160
______________________________________________________________________

Gogo

______________________________________________________________________
GOGO-no-coda ver. 2.24 (Feb 12 2000)
Copyright (C) 1999 PEN@MarineCat and shigeo
Special thanks to Keiichi SAKAI, URURI, Noisyu and Kei
This is based on LAME3.29beta and distributed under the LGPL
usage
gogo inputPCM [outputPCM] [options]

inputPCM is input wav file
if input.wav is `stdin' then stdin-mode
outputPCM is output mp3 file (omissible)

options
-b kbps bitrate [kpbs]
-br bps bitrate [ bps]
-silent dont' print progress report
-off {3dn,mmx,kni(sse),e3dn}
-v {0,..,9} VBR [0:high quality 9:high compression]
You should combine this with -b option
for only RAW-PCM input
-offset bytes skip header size
-8bit 8bit-PCM [dflt 16bit-PCM]
-mono mono-PCM [dflt stereo-PCM]
-bswap low, high byte swapping for 16bitPCM
-s kHz freq of PCM [dflt 44.1kHz]
-nopsy disable psycho-acoustics
-m {s,m,j} output format s:stereo, m:mono, j:j-stereo
-d kHz change sampling-rate of output MP3
-emh {n,c,5} de-emphasis
-lpf {on,off} 16kHz filter [dflt use if <= 128kbps; not use if >= 160kbps]
-test benchmark mode
-delete delete input file, after encoding
______________________________________________________________________

10.1.1. RipEnc

RipEnc performs the same task as the code above, but is written in
shell and is easier to use :)

Here's what it looks like.

______________________________________________________________________
RipEnc version 0.7, Copyright (C) 1999 Michael J. Parmeley
<[email protected]>, RipEnc comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY

There is currently NO encoding process running in the background
Your encode.log file is 982607 bytes long.

<Enter 'd' for details, 'v' to view the encode log, or 'del' to delete the encode log>

1) Change working directory....................[/megajukebox/tmp]
2) Choose encoder..............................[lame]
3) Choose ripper...............................[cdparanoia]
4) Choose id3 tool.............................[none]
5) Toggle between Manual and CDDB naming.......[manual]
6) Setup XMCD_LIBDIR variable for CDA..........[/var/X11R6/lib/xmcd]
7) Set preferred naming convention.............[artist-name_of_song.mp3]
8) Rip whole CD?...............................[no]
9) Set small hard drive option?................[no]
10) Please select your Cd-Rom device...........[/dev/cdrom]
11) Set the Bitrate for the encoded MP3's......[256]
12) List the files in your working directory
13) Start
14) About
15) Exit
?
______________________________________________________________________

10.2. GUI Based Encoders

GUI based encoders offer all the functionality of console based
encoding, but wrap it all up in a nice easy to use interface. Grip and
RipperX are similar in operation, both offer you the ability to select
one, several or all tracks on a CD and convert them. They also offer
CDDB support which allows you to retrieve the album and track
information from a server and saves you having to enter the
information by hand.

10.3. Encoder Performance

In the encoding sections I've mentioned 3 different encoders,
bladeenc, lame and gogo. The main difference is their performance in
encoding (although there are differences in the available options
which were listed earlier).

A little example. I ripped a track from a CD and then encoded it with
the different encoders. All encoders were run with the same system
conditions and all produced stereo out mp3's.

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox]$ ls -l cdda.wav
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dj dj 59823164 Feb 10 00:56 cdda.wav

[dj@megajukebox]$ bladeenc cdda.wav -br 256

BladeEnc 0.91 (c) Tord Jansson Homepage: http://bladeenc.mp3.no
===============================================================================
BladeEnc is free software, distributed under the Lesser General Public License.
See the file COPYING, BladeEnc's homepage or www.fsf.org for more details.

Files to encode: 1

Encoding: ../test.wav
Input: 44.1 kHz, 16 bit, stereo.
Output: 128 kBit, stereo.

Completed. Encoding time: 00:05:58 (0.78X)

All operations completed. Total encoding time: 00:05:58

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[dj@megajukebox]$ lame cdda.wav -b 256
LAME version 3.50 (www.sulaco.org/mp3)
GPSYCHO: GPL psycho-acoustic model version 0.74.
Encoding ../test.wav to ../test.wav.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz 128 kbps j-stereo MPEG1 LayerIII file
Frame | CPU/estimated | time/estimated | play/CPU | ETA
10756/ 10756(100%)| 0:02:28/ 0:02:28| 0:02:29/ 0:02:29| 1.9074| 0:00:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[dj@megajukebox]$ gogo cdda.wav -m s -b 256
GOGO-no-coda ver. 2.24 (Feb 12 2000)
Copyright (C) 1999 PEN@MarineCat and shigeo
Special thanks to Keiichi SAKAI, URURI, Noisyu and Kei
MPEG 1, layer 3 stereo
inp sampling-freq=44.1kHz out sampling-freq=44.1kHz bitrate=256kbps
inp sampling-freq=44.1kHz out sampling-freq=44.1kHz bitrate=128kbps
input file `../test.wav'
output file `../test.mp3'
{ 10751/ 10755} 100.0% ( 2.94x) re:[00:00:00.03] to:[00:01:35.42]
End of encoding
time= 95.430sec
______________________________________________________________________

It would appear that Gogo has a much optimised algorithm for encoding
than Bladeenc and Lame.

11. Streaming MP3's

A streaming server allows you to transmit MP3 files over a TCP based
network. This can be the Internet itself or your local network /
intranet.

The connection principal is very similar to that of a web server,
files are streamed when a client (the MP3 player) connects to the
server.

Setting-up a streaming server is reasonably straight forward, I'll
focus on Icecast first, then Fluid.

11.1. Icecast

After downloading and untaring, a good look around the doc/ directory
would be a good thing, the HTML manual is very helpful and
comprehensive.

If you have downloaded the source code, follow the instructions
regarding compiling pertinent to your system.

Icecast will not work correctly unless you correctly set the
servername in the config file, icecast.conf, which is located in the
etc directory. It must match the name that resolves to your IP address
exactly.

If you see the following line when Icecast starts-up you have
problems:

______________________________________________________________________
-> [05/Jan/2000:17:21:04] WARNING: Resolving the server name [your.server.name] does not work!
______________________________________________________________________

Edit icecast.conf which is located in the etc directory and locate the
line containing the entry for "server_name" and enter your servers
name. If you are unsure you can find out by using the hostname
command, or by cat'ing /etc/hosts.

Once you've made the neccesary changes you'll need to either copy the
conf file to the bin directory, or start icecast with the -c option
and specify the location, like so:

______________________________________________________________________
./icecast -c ../etc/icecast.conf
______________________________________________________________________

If everything has been configured correctly, you should see something
similar to the following:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox bin]$ ./icecast -c ../etc/icecast.conf -d /home/dj/mp3/icecast/
Icecast Version 1.3.0 Starting...
Icecast comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute copies of Icecast under the terms of the
GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.

[05/Jan/2000:18:36:30] Icecast Version 1.3.0 Starting..
[05/Jan/2000:18:36:30] Using stdin as icecast operator console
[05/Jan/2000:18:36:30] Tailing file to icecast operator console
[05/Jan/2000:18:36:30] Server started...
[05/Jan/2000:18:36:30] Listening on port 8000...
[05/Jan/2000:18:36:30] Using [megajukebox] as servername...
[05/Jan/2000:18:36:30] Max values: 1000 clients, 1000 clients per source, 10 sources, 5 admins
-> [05/Jan/2000:18:36:30] [Bandwidth: 0.000000MB/s] [Sources: 0] [Clients: 0] [Admins: 1] [Uptime: 0 seconds]
______________________________________________________________________

The -d option sets the directory for log files and templates.

Below is the list of command-line options:

______________________________________________________________________
-c [filename]

Parse as a configuration file. Please note that any command line
parameters you supply after this override whatever is in file. Also note that
icecast.conf in the current directory is already parsed when you specify
this file, so anything in icecast.conf not overridden by the new configuration
file will be used by the server.

-P [port]

This is the port used for all client, source, and admin connections. It's set
to 8000 by default.

-m [max clients]

Allow this number of client connections. When this number is reached, all
client connections will be refused with 'HTTP/1.0 504 Server Full'

-p [encoder password]

This sets the password that the encoder must use to be allowed to stream
to the server. Note that if you have compiled the server with crypt()
support, this argument must be an encrypted string.

-b

This will send the icecast server into the background (i.e daemon process).
To use the admin commands now, you have to connect to the server as an
admin, using some sort of telnet client.

-d [directory]

Make all log files created by icecast, and all templates that icecast looks
for be relative to this directory.
______________________________________________________________________

So, thats the server started, but you now need to connect an MP3
source to the server.

You can choose from two applications which deliver MP3 data to the
server, Shout and LiveIce.

11.1.1. Shout

Shout provides Icecast with a static playlist of MP3's to stream and
is included with Icecast.

You create the playlist if the MP3 files you want to stream with the
following:

______________________________________________________________________
find [MP3 directory] -name *.mp3 -print > playlist
______________________________________________________________________

At it's most basic level, to start the shout service, issue the
following:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox bin]# ./shout megajukebox -P hackme -p playlist
______________________________________________________________________

The -P option specifies the password needed to add a mount-point to
Icecast, this is the aptly set as hackme..... I strongly suggest you
change it otherwise someone may :) The -p option specifies the
location of the playlist file. Below is a list of all of the command
line options:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox bin]# ./shout
Usage: shout <host> [options] [[-b <bitrate] file.mp3]...
Options:
-B <directory> - Use directory for all shout's files.
-C <file> - Use file as configuration file
-D <dj_file> - Run this before every song (system())
-P <password> - Use specified password
-S - Display all settings and exit
-V - Use verbose output
-X <desc> - Use specified description.
-a - Turn on automatic bitrate (transfer) correction
-b <bitrate> - Start using specified bitrate
-d - Activate the dj.
-e <port> - Connect to port on server.
-f - Skip files that don't match the specified bitrate
-g <genre> - Use specified genre
-h - Show this text
-i - Use old icy headers
-k - Don't truncate the internal playlist (continue)
-l - Go on forever (loop)
-m <mount> - Use specified mount point
-n <name> - Use specified name
-o - Turn of the bitrate autodetection.
-p <playlist> - Use specified file as a playlist
-r - Shuffle playlist (random play)
-s - (Secret) Don't send meta data to the directory server
-u <url> - Use specified url
-v - Show version
-x - Don't update the cue file (saves cpu)
-z - Go into the background (Daemon mode)
-t - Enable title streaming
______________________________________________________________________

11.1.2. LiveIce

LiveIce can work in 2 modes, it can pass a playlist to Icecast or can
pass live audio from the soundcard.

After untaring and reading the README concerning building the package,
make sure you have mpg123 installed and available as LiveIce requires
it.

There are two ways of configuring LiveIce editing the config file with
vi/emacs/or whatever or by using the TK based configuration tool,
which is a pretty way of editing it :)

The best place for describing the internals of liveice.cfg can be
found at LiveIce's homepage where Scott covers all of the options.
This is a copy of my config file with LiveIce set to mixer mode
(stream from a list of MP3's)

NOTE: I've added comments to the file, so if you cut and paste make
sure the comments haven't wrapped around to a new line otherwise
LiveIce will not work :)

______________________________________________________________________
# liveice configuration file
# Automatically generated

SERVER megajukebox # Your server name * MUST BE THE NAME THE SERVER RESOLVES TO *
PORT 8000 # The port Icecast is running on

NAME Megajukebox # Information regarding the name of your server which is sent to MP3 players, and
# to directory servers.
# Examples 'Sarah FM' or 'ThisTown: Loud and Heavy Jazz - Internet Radio 24/7'

GENRE Live # Information regarding the genre. Examples 'Talk' or 'Dance'

DESCRIPTION # Information regarding the station. Example 'The best for reggae in the North'

URL http://megajukebox:8000 # The URL and port of the server.

PUBLIC 0 # Set this to 1 if you want Icecast to announce your station and list it's details
# on a directory server, otherwise leave 0

XAUDIOCAST_LOGIN # can be either ICY_LOGIN or X_AUDIOCAST_LOGIN. X_AUDIOCAST is better.

MOUNTPOINT /techno # Sets the mountpoint name of the stream for Icecast. Only used if X_AUDIOCAST is used
# otherwise defaults to icy_0

PASSWORD hackme # Icecast's admin password

SAMPLE_RATE 44100 # The sample rate of the stream
STEREO # Can be MONO or STEREO

NO_SOUNDCARD # See below

HALF_DUPLEX # Sets the soundcard duplex mode. Can be HALF_DUPLEX or FULL_DUPLEX
USE_GOGO # Sets the encoder to use. Check the README for the list
BITRATE 128000 # Sets the bit rate of the stream (see below)
VBR_QUALITY 1 # Sets the variable bit rate quality.

MIXER # See below

PLAYLIST /megajukebox/playlist # Location of the playlist (see details on the find command later in this chapter)

TRACK_LOGFILE track.log # Filename and location to dump list of MP3's streamed
______________________________________________________________________

Once you have your config file you start LiveIce like so:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox liveice]$ ./liveice
/megajukebox/playlist
1
opening connection to megajukebox 8000
Attempting to Contact Server
connection successful: forking process
opening pipe!...
writing password
Setting up Interface
Soundcard Reopened For Encoding
Input Format: 16Bit 44100Hz Stereo
Output Format: 256000 Bps Mpeg Audio
IceCast Server: megajukebox:8000
Mountpoint: /techno
Name: megajukebox - this and that radio - broadcasting 24/7
Genre: Techno
Url: http://megajukebox
Description: a load of digital noise -> but i know you like it :)

Press '+' to Finish
adding /megajukebox/demotunes/track_1.mp3
adding /megajukebox/demotunes/track_2.mp3
adding /megajukebox/demotunes/track_3.mp3
adding /megajukebox/demotunes/track_4.mp3
/megajukebox/demotunes/track_4.mp3
Adding New Channel 1
Adding New Channel 2
Channel 1 selecting
/megajukebox/demotunes/track_1.mp3
Channel 2 selecting
/megajukebox/demotunes/track_1.mp3
Playing track_1.mp3
searching for Id3v2
searching for Id3v1
copying the data
fixing the nulls
adding the url
closing input file
Using log track.log
______________________________________________________________________

The last line is a peak meter.

These are the keyboard controls for mixer mode:

______________________________________________________________________
Action Channel 1 Key Channel 2 Key
~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Select next track on channel 1 a
Select prev track on channel q z
Start/Stop channel 2 s
Reset channel w x
Increase volume on channel 3 d
Decrease volume on channel e c
Increase speed on channel 4 f
Decrease speed on channel r v
Sticky mode On/Random/Off 5 g
Preview channel t b
Random Track u m
______________________________________________________________________

The above liveice.cfg is for mixermode. To use LiveIce in audio mode
change the line relating to MIXER to NOMIXER and set NO_SOUNDCARD to
SOUNDCARD and restart LiveIce.

Forgetting to set the correct options will lead to some interesting
warning ;)

______________________________________________________________________
946:Error: Line In mode *and* no soundcard??????? Eeejit!
______________________________________________________________________

Once you have it all correctly set up and have plugged in an external
source, you should be able to stream =:)

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox liveice]$ ./liveice
/megajukebox/playlist
0
Initialising Soundcard
16Bit 22050Hz Stereo Full Duplex
opening connection to megajukebox 8000
Attempting to Contact Server
connection successful: forking process
opening pipe!...
writing password
Setting up Interface
Soundcard Reopened For Encoding
Input Format: 16Bit 22050Hz Stereo
Output Format: 32000 Bps Mpeg Audio
IceCast Server: megajukebox:8000
Mountpoint: /daves_band_live_at_the_club
Name: megajukebox - Dave and the Dynamite - Live at the Roxy
Genre: Live/Rock
Url: http://megajukebox
Description: megajukebox::Louder than a frog in a trashcan..... and almost as musical

Press '+' to Finish
Lvl: L: 8704 R: 11776
______________________________________________________________________

The last line is a signal level meter, if the input signal is too high
you will get a *clip* warning. If you do turn down the gain of the
input source.

The keen eyed amongst you may of noticed that in liveice.cfg the first
comment lines point out that the file is automatically generated. If
you are using the TK based GUI liveiceconfigure.tk and you've made
manual changes, you will lose them when you save. Either use the GUI
or learn vi/emacs :)

11.2. Fluid

After untaring the bundle cd to the directory, then read the README :)

Fluid has three basic modes of operation, transmit, relay and forward.
I'll only focus on transmit.

The config files associated for transmit are located in
config/MP3TX.cfg. To test the server run with the following, at this
point the default config settings should be ok:
java Fluid TX

Naturally enough you'll need Java of some form installed first. You
can use either the Blackdown port of JDK available from
<http://www.blackdown.org> or if you are using Redhat, Kaffe.

Fluid comes with a few sample MP3 files, so if everything is working
you should see something similar to this (I've started the server
using Kaffe in this example, you may have to start it using java):

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox Fluid-Beta2J]$ kaffe Fluid tx
------- Fluid Streaming Server Beta 2 -------
This program is ShareWare(tm) and it will not
be crippled in any way because of it. However
if you do like the program and will use it
commercial purposes, we ask of you to contact
us at the address below for pricing info:

Eldean AB E-mail:
Sjoangsvagen 7 [email protected]
S-192 72 Sollentuna
SWEDEN

Fluid is Copyright Subside (C) 1998
written by Lars Samuelsson
http://www.subside.com
---------------------------------------------

* Transmission mode *
Reading config from: config/MP3TX.cfg
Reading playlist: playlist.m3u
Server started on port: 2711
Accepting administrator login on port: 2710
P| Dr. Nick - Hello Everybody
______________________________________________________________________

If you get this far, it looks like things are working, but I'm sure
you'll want to stream more than the demo files!

You'll need to compile a playlist of the MP3's you want to stream.
This will be a static list users will not be able to alter this list
or make requests. This playlist is named playlist.m3u and is located
by default in the root directory.

To compile a playlist of all MP3's in a particular directory (or disk)
use the following command:

______________________________________________________________________
find [MP3 directory] -name *.mp3 -print > playlist.m3u
______________________________________________________________________

By default the server uses port 2711, which is where your listeners
will connect to, if you need to change this this can be done in the
config file.

The server can be remotely administered by telneting to it's admin
port, by default port 2710 like so:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox Fluid-Beta2J]$ telnet localhost 2710
Trying 127.0.0.1..megajukebox
Connected to localhost.localdomain.
Escape character is '^]'.
jaguar
You are connected to the -Fluid- Streaming Server
Type "help" for a command reference
help
The following commands are available:
help conn curr exit
curr
Information about the currently broadcasted song:
Title: Beer Talk
Artist: Homer Simpson
Album: The Simpsons
Year: 1996
Comment: Borrowed this as an example
Genre: Comedy
______________________________________________________________________

The reference to "jaguar" is the admin password, this is the default.
There is no prompt for the password so please don't sit there waiting
for one! I suggest that you change the password from the default oth�
erwise you will invite a hack! This can be changed in the config file,
which looks like this:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox config]$ cat MP3TX.cfg
2711
2710
5
4096
32
1000
jaguar
playlist.m3u
current.txt

# --- The lines are ---
# 1. PORT number (the server will use)
# 2. PORT number (for maintaining the server remotely)
# 3. Maximum number of connections (the server will accept)
# 4 Packetsize when reading/sending (in bytes)
# 5. Bitrate of the mp3s in kbit/s (all mp3s must have same bitrate)
# 6. Delay between songs (in milliseconds)
# 7. Password for remote administration
# 8. Playlist name (list in .m3u format)
# 9. Name of the file to write song info to (from ID3-tag)
______________________________________________________________________

The reference to the playlist being in m3u format means that it is in
the same format as produced by the find command mentioned earlier.

11.3. Bandwith considerations

Streaming audio can consume vast quantities of bandwidth if the MP3
servers' bit-rate is set too high.

Consider this scenario. A T1 link has a capacity of approx. 1.55
Mb/Sec. If you stream your MP3's at 128K/Bps stereo, each connecting
player will use 256K/Bps, so only 6 users could connect to your MP3
server at any time without problems. And at 256K/Bps, you will not get
too many modem users connecting!

So you must make a decision at what to set your stream rates not only
on what your server's internet connection is rated at, but what your
users will be connecting at. 24K/Bps Stereo will give a reasonable
quality signal that 56K modem users will be able to connect to, and
for the same T1 line would allow approx. 32 simultaneous connections.

If your server is running on an Intranet, bandwidth issues will still
have to be considered especially if your network is running 10M/Sec.

But please let either your ISP or sys admin know you are going to
stream otherwise you may be in for a shock. Some ISP's will charge you
for bandwidth over a certain limit and sys admins like to know why
their network is now running slow :)

11.4. Copyright Issues

I think it's reasonable to assume that record companies will not like
you streaming material without their permission or payment of some
kind! So what can you stream?

This is an area where you will need to be aware of the legal
ramifications, because it will be you who will be liable.

Below are two links, one for the Electronic Frontier Foundation who
are advocates of freeing restrictions surrounding the technology. The
other link is to the Recording Industry Association of America, which
seeks to protect the rights of artists from piracy.

I strongly suggest visiting both of the sites, and any others relevant
to where you are physically based.

<http://www.eff.org/cafe/>

<http://www.riaa.com/weblic/weblic.htm>

12. Listening to MP3's.

So, hopefully, you should now have some MP3 files ready to listen to,
and have the choice of paying from file or stream.

12.1. Playing from File

Playing from file is reasonably straight-forward with all players. The
only big difference is some are command-line based and some are X
based.

Playing an MP3 file from file requires you to pass the mp3 file as a
parameter, like so:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox]$ mpg123 /mp3_files/SampleFile.mp3

or

[dj@megajukebox]$ xaudio /mp3_files/SampleFile.mp3
______________________________________________________________________

If you want to play a series of files, pass them in as a list:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox]$ alsaplayer /mp3_files/SampleFile1.mp3 /mp3_files/SampleFile2.mp3
______________________________________________________________________

To play all the tracks in a directory, just wildcard the file
selected, like so:

______________________________________________________________________
[dj@megajukebox]$ xmms /mp3_files/*.mp3
______________________________________________________________________

12.2. Playing from MP3 Streams

Playing from a MP3 stream is quite easy, just replace the file with
the streams url and port number:

______________________________________________________________________
mpg123 http://localhost:8000

or

freeamp http://megajukebox:2711
______________________________________________________________________

12.3. Mixing

12.3.1. eMixer

eMixer gives you the ability to mix MP3's in a simllar manner to a
DJ's mixing desk.

Newer versions support 2 sound cards so you can output your mix on one
card and monitor or cue the next track on another.

As usual once untaring, read the readme on how to build the package.

You will need to create a playlist of MP3 files, do this with the find
command mentioned in the Streaming section.

You will need mpg123 installed before you can run eMixer.

Here are the contol keys (taken from the readme)

______________________________________________________________________
KEYBOARD CONTROLS
"up, down" scroll thru playlist
"page up, page down" scroll thru playlist screen full at a time
"enter" start/stop track
"tab" change channel
"}","]" toggle between volume and speed controls/windows
"space" restart active track
"left, right" fader controls
"insert" decrease volume/speed in channel one
"home" increase volume/speed in channel one
"delete" decrease volume/speed in channel two
"end" increase volume/speed in channel two
"< , / , >" left, centre & right positions of fader
" + , = " (NEW) switch between faders
" q " start/stop channel channel one
" w " start/stop channel channel two
" p " toggle between playmodes - single, loop, continous, random
" a " stop all channels
" f " file menu
" u " util menu
" h " help menu
" ~, ` " cancel menu drop down
" s " turn SIM Play on
(SIM Play starts the same track in both channels
simultaneously )
______________________________________________________________________

13. Feedback.

New hardware and software is being released all the time. If you are
using newer versions of the hardware and / or software listed within
this document, or can add to anything within this area, please send
your information for inclusion to [email protected] and I'll include it
in the next release.

While I'd like to reply to every question, please note that on
occasions I will not be able to reply quickly due to work.

Happy MP3'ing!!