Assume you have a whole mess of WAV files that you want to convert. First let's turn them into MP3s. lame --preset insane *wav This basically creates the mp3 at 320, which is, uh, insane, but it's the highest quality level. If its not 320, I don't want it. You may choose 192 or above; unless it's speech, I would NEVER use anything less than 192. Now let's convert your WAVs to FLAC files. shntool conv -o flac *.wav If you're using a Debian-based system, you'll probably need to do this first: sudo apt-get install shntool Is that not easy or what? (Check out all of our posts on conversions, WAV, MP3, & FLAC.) ...

My buddy Rich emailed me today and asked me how to rip CDs to mp3 files so he can to them on his new Cowon music player. Yeah, I know he's a bit behind the times, but the important thing is that he's on the train now. So here's what I told him. OK, download Quintessential Player: http://www.quinnware.com/ It's not open source, but it's the best media player I know of for Windows, as it handles EVERYTHING - music, video, ripping, managing, etc. Also download these plugins: http://www.quinnware.com/list_plugins.php?plugin=126http://www.quinnware.com/list_plugins.php?plugin=42http://www.quinnware.com/list_plugins.php?plugin=25 <-- THE MOST IMPORTANT Install Quintessential Player and then the plugins. Now open Quintessential Player. Right-click in the player & go to Preferences (or press ctrl p). On the Settings tab, go to the Encoder section & choose Encode Format. Make these changes: Select Encoding Format: MP3 Audio Encoder Method: Average Bitrate, and move the slider all the way to the ...

If SUSE continues down this path, they are screwing up in a big way. Red Hat/Fedora also does this - leaves MP3 support out of the install - but you can re-enable MP3 support by installing a single RPM. SUSE, however, according to a review of the forthcoming 9.3 release, has actually compiled GStreamer, Arts, & the KDE Multimedia packages WITHOUT SUPPORT FOR MP3. That means it's not just a matter of installing a single RPM & getting MP3 support back, oh no. Instead, you have to recompile all of those multimedia packages, which is a total PITA and, frankly, a load of bull. Oh … and the reviewer actually did the recompiles, and then guess what? An update broke 'em all again! Joy! OK, there is one package that does support MP3 playback: Real player. Wheeeeee! Now, I'm quite thrilled that the Real player isn't the stinking pile of poo that it used to be, but c'mon. It's no Amarok. Or Juk. Or XMMS. Or Rhythmbox. Ridiculous. Who the heck wants to use the Real player to manage all of ...

OK, here's the situation: you have some sounds, but you don't like they sound. Sounds like you want your sounds to sound like another sound. So it sounds like you need to convert those sounds to another sound. So how do you do that? SoundConverter, of course! It outputs as Ogg Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, or WAV, & for OGG & MP3 you can choose a quality level, which is as it should be. OK, fine, but what's it accept as input? Why, anything that GStreamer can read. On my system, that means the following, plus a WHOLE lot more: mp3, wav, FLAC, Windows Media Audio, Real, Shorten, and the list goes on and on and on. SoundConverter does its job quickly, and it just … works. Sounds like you should give it a try! (Check out all of our posts on OGG, mp3, FLAC, sound, & music.) ...

OK, you just got done installing SUSE, & now it's time to play an MP3. Ooops! Can't! Java applets? Nope. Flash? Uh-uh. Windows Media? Are you kiddin'? So, if you want to enjoy all that cool stuff that SUSE can't just include due to crazy licenses and stupid laws, you need to read Hacking OpenSUSE & follow the instructions contained within. Consider it absolutely essential reading if you're using SUSE. (Check out all of my posts on SUSE.) ...

On the CWELUG mailing list, Robert asks for someone to explain podcasting. So I jump in with this message, which I hope you find useful. <begin my message> The following assumes you know what RSS is. If you don't, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_29. 1. Get an RSS feedreader that supports enclosures (the mp3 files that are the basis for the podcasts). One that runs on your client machine will hopefully download enclosures; one that is web-based, like Bloglines, will provide a link to the enclosure that you can download. or, you can get a specific podcast client tool that only works with RSS feeds that contain enclosures, like these fine open source tools: a. Windows: ipodder b. Linux: bashpodder c. Mac OS X: ipodder You can find a list of podcast clients at http://www.ipodder.org/directory/4/ipodderSoftware. 2. subscribe to RSS feeds that contain podcasts/enclosures (later today I'll provide a list of podcast feeds I'm subscribed to). 3. Once ...

Again, I've been cleaning out old emails & notes, & I remembered that back in July 2004 I was interviewed on NPR twice in one week, on two different shows, both times talking about dumping IE for anything else (although I really pushed Firefox hard). It all started with my column in SecurityFocus, Time to Dump Internet Explorer (still one of my faves!). Then I was interviewed for the 5-minute-long Minnesota Public Radio show "Future Tense" (requires Real player). If you subscribe to the RSS feed for Future Tense, you'll get a link to an MP3 enclosure of each show, which is just too cool. Then I was interviewed for "All Things Considered" (altho I wish I hadn't been called "radical", which you'll easily be able to understand if you listen). It was fun doing those interviews, and I've since gone on to do many more. If you're a Firefox devotee, check 'em out. ...

I write a monthly column for Linux Magazine called Do It Yourself. LM has a policy that they don't publish stuff online until 60 days after it's published in print, which is fine with me - at least everything in the mag makes its way online, which is more than a lot of pubs do. One of my columns from a few months ago just went up: "Rip, Convert, Listen". As I say at the beginning, "If you don't know how to convert CDs into audio files on Linux, this column is for you." This is actually part one of a two-parter on converting CDs to digital music; in this one, I look at Grip and oggenc, two programs that together get your music off of CDs and into the patent-free, smaller-than-mp3-while-sounding-better OGG format. Check the column out - I know you'll learn something. ...

Today is SUSE day on the Open Source Weblog, and in part 2 we look at some more reviews & some eyecandy. Mad Penguin has a good review up at "First Look at SUSE LINUX 9.3 Professional". If you're updating SUSE to 9.3 and you're using encrypted partitions, read this review! He covers things you should know in cases like that. If you're planning to use Beagle, the powerful system search tool, you'd better read the article too - there's a gotcha you should know about. And remember … this is review I mentioned a few weeks ago that said that SUSE didn't include MP3 support. To my knowledge, this has been rectified, so someone at Novell got some sense. For the visual learners among you, the fine folks at O'Reilly's OSDir have 94 - count 'em, 94! - screenshots you can check out if you wanna see this new beauty. If you want to buy it, Novell will certainly sell it to you. It's $99, or $59 for an upgrade. Not a bad price, really - remember, Apple's Tiger is $100 or so. (Check ...

Someone on the CWELUG mailing list asked, "Can anyone recommend a FLOSS video player that works under Windows? Under Linux? Under OS X? Under all three?" Following is my answer. For Windows, Media Player Classic is pretty good. VLC runs on EVERYTHING. "VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network." VLC supports a ridiculous variety of platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Linux (oodles of distros), Zaurus, WinCE (AKA PocketPC) ... & more. However, the best general media player (but not for DVDs) on Windows is Quintessential Player, which is free but not open. Poo. :( (Check out all of my posts on media players.) ...

If you've ever developed an open source media application, you've probably stumbled across the problems with dealing with proprietary formats and their codecs. There's some hope though. XVid have tried to develop strong open MPEG 4 codecs, and the Xiph.org Foundation host and support numerous open codec projects. The most popular Xiph.org backed codec is Vorbis (sometimes known as Ogg Vorbis - in reference to the Ogg container format), an audio codec competing against MP3, but developers may not be aware of other open source codecs and technologies which can be used with Ogg: Tremor: An integer based version of Vorbis for audio work on embedded devices Theora: A video codec Flac: A loss-less audio codec Speex: A voice audio format, designed for ultra low file sizes and bit rates OggWrite: Designed for text encapsulation, for subtitles, closed captions, etc. Ogg Metadata: A generic meta data format. ...

If you're using KDE, open the Konqueror file manager & find a text file. Right-click on it & pay attention to the Actions menu. Go check that one out. You may have only one or two things in the Action menu, or you may have several. I have the following: Rename with KRename Sign file Encyrypt file Create Data CD with K3b Print That list is generated by KDE servicemenus. Basically, servicemenus pay attention to the file you click on, & then offer actions possible for that particular file. See what happens when you right-click on an MP3 file, an OpenOffice.org doc, or a JPG. Many of the choices in the Action submenu will be the same, but you will always get unique actions for each different file type. It's really easy to install a new servicemenu: just download it and then copy the file to this location: ~/.kde/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/ Let's say you download the fantastic "print openoffice ...

I was on the phone with a friend in Germany the other day, and he reminded me that I used to make it possible for him to listen to my music collection via streaming a few months ago, & then he asked if I would set that up again. I remembered that I'd been using gnump3d, and due to some reshuffling of my boxes & my music, that had disappeared. So I ran apt-get install gnump3d, made a few changes to /etc/gnump3d/gnump3d.conf, ran /etc/init.d/gnump3d restart, & I was in business. Well, not really. I had to wait for gnump3d to index all my tunes, and that takes a long, long, loooooong time when you have as many tunes as I do. Several hours later, it was ready. And now I can listen to my music no matter when I am in the world, as long as I have a Net connection, & my buddy Matt can listen in from Germany whenever he feels like it. If you need free streaming software for your music (mp3, ogg, & more!), check out gnump3d. It's very, very cool. (Check out all of my posts on music ...

I just got the email from Theo: the OpenBSD 3.8 theme song "Hackers of the Lost RAID" has been released. For those of you who aren't familiar, on each OpenBSD release CD the team includes a song written to commemorate that particular release; s the release date gets closer, they make the theme available for download on the website. This time "song" is a bit of a misnomer, it's really more in the style of an old time radio play portraying the adventures of Puffiana Jones as he tries to uncover the documentation for the "lost RAID." Those of you who have been playing along at home will recognize this as a deliberate dig at Adaptec, IBM/Mylex, and others who refused to give the team documentation for their controller APIs and thwarted the efforts of Theo & Co. to reverse engineer them. The song is available for download as both MP3 and OGG, and the lyrics and the story behind them is on the download page. I'm also going to pass along Theo's request to the Open Source community: please ...

Earlier today I explained how to listen to podcasts with open source tools. Some folks have been wondering what podcasts I like to listen to, so here's my list - the links are to the direct podcast feed that you want to subscribe to, if you want to check 'em out yourself. And by the way - I use a modified bashpodder on my Linux box to grab these puppies. It's great software! And so simple! All In The Mind @ Radio National (Australian science show about the brian & mind) APN Bluegrass Express APN Classic Country (I think this & the previous one are dead, which is a shame) Ebert & Roeper (Gotta know what flix to see!) Future Tense (a 5-minute-long tech & science show from American Public Radio - awesome!) IT Conversations (You MUST get this! MUST! If you like technology, this is an ABSOLUTE MUST! For more info, see the main web site.) KCRW Film Reviews (Short & sweet movie reviews, ...