o'reilly - mp3 the definitive guide

[...]... which was intended to address highquality video However, MPEG-2 was shown to deliver sufficiently high quality, so MPEG-3 was conjoined with the existing MPEG-2 specification The spec now skips from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 1.1.3.2 The MP3 patent The fact that the MP3 spec is maintained by the MPEG Working Group doesn't mean they invented the technology The working group merely codifies standards to guarantee... Phoenix from the chaos of the Internet The industry has yet to feel the full impact of MP3, but they will—it's inevitable The genie is already out of the bottle IT-SC 28 Chapter 2 How MP3 Works: Inside the Codec So what's the trick? How does the MP3 format accomplish its radical feats of compression and decompression, while still managing to maintain an acceptable level of fidelity to the original... Whack-a-Mole—eliminate one site and six others spring up in its place Even with the cooperation of ISPs, the task is futile and the industry knows it, though they are still obliged to continue trying 1.2.1.2.1 Beat 'em: The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) In the face of this apparent futility, the industry has decided to approach the problem from another angle: Chop it off at the knees Since the. .. can encode their own songs to MP3, they can potentially expose themselves to the world at large without ever having to sign a recording contract They can go directly to the people, bypassing the industry as we know it This possibility is analogous to the great desktop publishing revolution of the '80s and the web publishing revolution of the 1990s—suddenly, everyone has the ability to publish their own... offering self-help material, all in MP3 format These and other legitimate uses of MP3 will be adversely affected by any attempt by the record industry to squash unprotected MP3 files in general 1.2.3 Why MP3 Is Here to Stay As you've probably heard, MP3 isn't the only digital audio compression format out there As you'll see in Chapter 9, there are numerous alternatives to the format available to the public... digital rights, and the recording industry's stance on the matter Finally, we'll examine the correlation between the MP3 and open source software movements, and find out why file-based digital music distribution is here to stay 1.1 MP3 Basics If you're new to the MP3 game, you'll want to know exactly what MP3 files are, where to get them, how they work, and how to make the most of a growing MP3 collection... come In some encodings, these frames may interact with one another For example, if one frame has leftover storage space and the next frame doesn't have enough, they may team up for optimal results At the beginning or end of an MP3 file, extra information about the file itself, such as the name of the artist, the track title, the name of the album from which the track came, the recording year, genre,... aren't as great as they were in the '70s Of course, there are several reasons for this, such as the fact that CDs cost twice what LPs used to cost, and the fact that we no longer seem to have anything like the giant mega-stars of the '70s Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" stayed in Billboard's Top 100 for the better part of a decade While we still have stars, the days of the Beatles and the Stones are,... radio station There are several key differences between MP3 downloads and MP3 streaming: IT-SC 13 MP3 broadcasts aren't saved to the listener's hard disk, unlike MP3 downloads When you tune in to a broadcast, the only thing that's saved to disk is a tiny text file containing some meta-data about the broadcast in question, including the server's address and a playlist This file is passed to the MP3 player,... of users, the thrill of MP3 is more simple than that: it's the possibility of getting their hands on piles of high-quality music, free of charge In this chapter, we'll get a bird's-eye view of the format and the MP3 phenomenon: what it is, how it works, how to download and create MP3 files, and how to listen to them Then we'll take a look at some of the many issues surrounding MP3, including piracy, . IT-SC 1 MP3: The Definitive Guide Scot Hacker Publisher: O'Reilly First Edition March 2000 ISBN: 1-5 659 2-6 6 1-7 , 400 pages MP3: The Definitive Guide introduces the power-user. from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. 1.1.3.2 The MP3 patent The fact that the MP3 spec is maintained by the MPEG Working Group doesn't mean they invented the technology. The working group merely codifies. raised by MP3 in the second part of this chapter. 1.1.1.1 Why the term " ;MP3? " IT-SC 10 " ;MP3& quot; is the quick way of referring to an encoding algorithm called "MPEG-1, Layer