MP3 Tutorial, Part I: Write It or Rip It -- Then Stream It to the World

As the world raptly gawks at the rockers, rappers, and record companies fighting over which millionairegets even richer off the MP3 groundswell, something important is sadly being upstaged.

The idea that first excited so many people about Web-based music was not that kids might get to hear a Metallica track without generating another royalty for the band and the label. It was the promise that any joe six-string with a guitar and a computer could get exposure for his music without catering to the corporate A&R machine; and that someone with an important idea that didn‘t necessarily fit the Nightly News profile would be able to broadcast it anyway, and without spending a fortune.

But as distracting as it is, the noise and mud at the trough has not completely obscured the fact that the Internet and streaming media still offer a powerful new avenue for the little guy to publish anything from music to manifesto. In fact, the fast-developing open source movement is about to make the technology's capabilities even more available.

If you're one of the many who want to use MP3 and the Internet to stream your sounds to browsers world-wide, there are a number of tools and techniques you need to learn and use. Here's an overview that will introduce you to the what and how of getting your song, slander or sermon from your mind to the modems of the masses, and the recent developments that may soon affect things profoundly.

What It Is

When a browser or media player downloads an MP3 from the Net, what comes down the wire is a digital audio file similar to those on a CD--which a computer can convert into sound. There are a lot of different digital audio file formats, but the MP3 format is popular on the Web because it offers the right combination of good-quality audio and small file size.

There are two basic ways to get an audio file via the Internet. The first way is simply to download it and save it to hard disk like you would any file one difference being that some systems can begin playing the file back before it's completely downloaded. Streaming audio, on the other hand, is pushed by the server it comes from, and actually plays back as its being received, usually without being saved to your disk.

MP3, technically MPEG I, Layer 3--is a encoder/decoder (codec) designed specifically for music delivered over the Internet. It uses a perceptual encoding algorithm that removes sounds obscured (masked) by other sounds in Wave, AIFF or other digital audio files. The codec's output an MP3 file--is smaller than the original, and usually plays at around 16kBytes (128kbits) per second. This format was not originally intended to support streaming via a modem, but files to be downloaded and played later. However, through the use of .m3u metafilles, recent versions of Web audio players such as RealNetworks RealPlayer and WinAmp can take advantage of faster computers and broader bandwidths to stream MP3 files.

Ripping and Encoding

People who want to put their own audio files on a Web site so they can be played later usually do it for one of two reasons. Either they want to upload a song from a CD produced by someone else, or they are producing their own audio files which they want to broadcast.

If you're developing your own performances, the current versions of most of the audio or MIDI recording/editing applications you might use can themselves save your production as an MP3. If yours doesn't, there are inexpensive commercial and shareware applications that will convert standard Windows Wave or Macintosh AIFF files into the MP3 format. If you're a consumer and not a creator, you can get audio files from sources including the Web or commercial CD-ROMs, or by extracting (ripping) them from an audio CD (as a direct digital data transfer, or less effectively--by sampling the CD's analog output).

MusicMatch Jukebox is perhaps the best-known freeware converter/ripper. The most well-known--and arguably best--commercial ripper is RealNetworks' $30 RealJukebox Plus. This app, for both Mac and Windows, has a powerful, simple interface with lots of options that will rip a single track or entire CD and save it as a Real, MP3, or .WAV file. It will also convert files already on your hard disk from any one of those formats to any other.

Serving

The final step is to make your production available on your Web site. The first consideration is to use an ISP who offers you streaming services, usually by having a RealNetworks RealServer available. This package specializes in streaming audio files to any media player that requests them. (There are other solutions, and I'll cover them in depth in another installment.) When your site is up and running, upload your audio files to your media directory. The last piece of the puzzle is to code the appropriate commands, URLs and references in your Web pages. When this is done, you're ready to broadcast.

There are, of course, a multitude of details to getting your site and your audio files ready, and plenty of opportunities to tear your hair and scream curses at your computer. I'll cover them all in the coming weeks.

The Open Source Challenge

While the explosion of MP3 audio on the Web has been a liberating event for many, it's not entirely free. The developers of the MP3 codec, Thomson multimedia and Fraunhofer IIS-A, dun any operation distributing electronic music via the Web a $15,000 annual fee and 1% of its revenue, with a minimum of a penny a download. Thomson also charges the manufacturers of decoders and players 50 cents a unit, and makers of hardware and software encoders $2.50 per unit. While this doesn't dent serious MP3 providers, it can be a deterrent to individuals who want to Webcast. A development in the works now, however, may soon democratize audio streaming even further.

In the mold of Linux, the open source operating system, comes the Ogg Project, an umbrella effort created to provide a fully open multimedia system. The effort is the brainchild of iCAST, a Bay Area-based company that makes iCASTER, a media-search and -player software that plays MP3s, video, online radio and TV, and even provides access to chat rooms.

The first fruit of the project is Ogg Vorbis, a new open source audio codec. Ogg Vorbis is designed to be a completely fee- and patent-free, codec that anyone can use and even modify as they please. In fact, all the encoders, decoders, plugins, and tools at vorbis.com are under a public license, and its libraries are licensed under the business-friendly Lesser/Library GNU Public License.

Like MP3, Vorbis is a lossy codec (it removes part of the sound it compresses), but iCAST claims it uses superior acoustic models that lessen the damage, and that Vorbis-compressed music will not only sound better than an MP3 file, but be smaller as well.

Complementing Vorbis is Icecast, iCAST's free, open source server that will provide a free tool for anyone with access to a Web server, without paying licensing fees like those demanded by non-open source servers. The stated aim of the Ogg Vorbis project is to open to everyone the ability to broadcast on the Web. If iCAST is successful, it could create a serious challenge to the status quo and open Web broadcasting to even more people.