Making Mp3
Ok, You don't have any mp3 to trade or you want to rip some of your own stuff. The first thing to know about making mp3 is that you need to have 2 programs.
Step 1: Ripping
The first program is designed to take music off the CD itself and save it on your hard drive as a .wav file. A really good program to do this is called Digital Audio Copy (DAC). I will post DAC version 2.3 cripple free shareware because of the variety of platforms it works on.
Download Dac for Dos 2.3 now.
Also, if you want to try WinDac (DAC for Windows), Please go to http://members.aol.com/schmelnik/dac.html for the official homepage.
The reason i say to use DAC for Dos is because WinDac has a nasty tendancy to not work with standard IDE Cd-roms. If you have a really nice CD-ROM like a SCSI, then it will work. Dac For Dos however, will work with regular CD-ROMs. Anyway, download and install DAC for DOS.
Now run it.
Select a track, then Hit F2 to start copying a track. If it says "your drive does not support this function," it's not your drive. It's Windows. There are two ways to solve this problem.
1. Download This patch. It puts a new scsi file into windows. This works SOMETIMES and YOU MUST REBOOT your computer to get it to work. Note: this is NOT an illeagle patch. It simple replaces a .vxd file that causes the problem.
2. Shut down to DOS. Hit the start button, then go to SHUT DOWN, then select "Restart Computer in MS-Dos mode." Then all you have to do is go to the right directory and type "DAC". There is NO command string other than just the name of the program. By the way, Ms-Dos prompt inside of the programs folder will NOT work. You MUST shut down.
Anyway, if you dont like DAC, there's others such as CDDA. I think the DAC homepage has a link to it somewhere.
Step 2: Encoding
This is the Long part. The encoder is what makes the difference. I use a dos tool called l3enc. Now i know i know. You HATE those long DOS command lines. Well, they make a cool little Windows interface for it, and it's FREEware!
Here's what it looks like:
All you have to do is tell it where l3enc is. Oh by the way, ive posted this encoder as well as l3enc shareware version below.
Ok, now one thing that is an absolute MUST is that you use 128000 bits/s. Anyone really into mp3 uses this. 112000 is not good enough quality and 256000 makes the files too large. This is not my Opinion on the matter, rather is the STANDARD among mp3 traders.
Other programs exist which encode faster than l3enc. In fact, a lot of lamers tend to laugh at me when i say i use l3enc. The say "It's too slow." l3enc is rather slow compared to the crappy programs that they use. What they fail to admit is that thier mp3's have crappy quality. Pop's and noises in the songs suck, and when your computer is trying to encode at high speeds like these programs do, it makes mistakes frequently. The purpose of mp3 is to be HIGH QUALITY audio. If youre not into HIGH QUALITY then dont bother with mp3, use real audio. People like that really piss me off. There is NEVER any excuse for making low quality mp3's. Trading low quality mp3's will only piss people off. By the way: The "High Quality" option is up to you. It slows it down tremendously, and i cant tell an audible difference. All im saying is not to use these "ulta fast" encoders. L3 is fast, but its accurate. L3 without the high quality option can still be considered "high quality" mp3's
Here's an idea: Start Visual Encoder and select all your files that you want to encode by holding down the ctrl key. Hit "encode" and let it go overnight. This way you can encode several albums while you sleep. ;)
Anyway, this concludes the "how to make mp3 lesson". Please note that these lessons are NOT proof-read. I just write them off the top of my head when i have time. Oh well, later....