| Welcome to the MP3 Toolkit! If you are new to sound files of this type, this page will soon have you playing these files of remarkable sound quality. It may take a download or two but believe me that these files are well worth it. All the links to software you will need are included here, along with a selection of other good mp3 related sites. Why not check out your new player with my monthly mp3. |
What are mp3's?MP3 is the latest in PC audio compression technology, that has finally allowed net users to download complete CD quality songs to hard disk. Before mp3, due to the huge size of a CD quality wave file (approx 10Mb per min), it was unfeasible to obtain such files from the internet. Yet with the introduction of this technology, we can compress digitised wave soundfiles to approx 10% of their original size. For instance, a 5 minute song in wave format would probably use 50Mb approx of hard disk space, whereas once the same file has been converted to mp3, the file size is reduced to a mere 5Mb. This means that a standard 74 min blank CD could now be used to store approximately 11 hours of music in mp3 format.
How do i play mp3's?To play mp3 soundfiles on your computer you will need a soundcard, speakers or headphones and an mp3 player. If you don't already have a player installed, then i strongly recommend downloading the Winamp player. This is by far the most popular program, due to it's sheer quality, simplicity and wealth of added features.Click on the link to download Winamp, if you want to see how it looks then check out this screenshot.
How do i record mp3's?Recording your own mp3's is a relatively easy task albeit slightly time consuming. There are various programs around that can "rip" digital audio at CD quality from your CD ROM player. This process is known as Digital Audio Extraction (DAE), which means that you can make an exact copy of your CD track(s) by bypassing the soundcard altogether.Unfortunately you must have a DAE compatible CD ROM player, check out this fairly comprehensive list. For beginners i recommend the Audio Catalyst software, this program integrates the extremely popular "ripping" program Audiograbber, with the Xing MP3 Encoder program. Click on the link for useful information about how to download and use Audio Catalyst, plus a few screenshots.
Where can i find mp3's?If you don't want to go looking for mp3's, i've included a list of bands that have direct mp3 downloads on their web-pages.Does anyone else know of any other sites with mp3 downloads? Please let me know so i can post them here.....thanks.
Hot Water Music
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