With every silver lining, there is a cloud. Despite the potential of MP3, record companies in the U.S. have tried to get the DoJ to ban the distribution of MP3 encoders on the internet. The main reason is because the industry could potentially lose millions of dollars through piracy. Just imagine, if everyone had MP3 players and encoders, you could go on the 'net and download the latest songs for free, all in CD quality. This is absolute crap. People will continue to buy CD's, because of their wide usage. Take for example car stereos and walkmans. And most people will buy CD's to listen on their Dolby pro-logic home theatre systems. With the decreasing price of writeable CDROM drives, and the introduction of DVD, there are greater things for these guys to worry about.
The RIAA is a load of bastards who are trying to ban MP3's on the net. They have their own website set up to try and get public support. Their latest attempt to curb the MP3 trend is to ban the latest MP3 hardware. Several companies are developing portable MP3 players, using 2.5" laptop hard drives or 64Mb Flash RAM to store the music. These are awesome units, able to store 1000's of songs (which you can mix & match yourself), and they have no physical moving parts so you don't need to worry about track - skipping. A unit will cost ~$US 300 - 500.
I have quite a large collection of MP3's some recorded from my own CD collection, some from the 'net. I find that the quality varies between them. This is because some people have no idea how to record them properly, and some are just taped off the radio. If it is done properly, CD quality is not unachievable. Firstly, if you have the right type of CDROM (ie not Mitsumi!) then you can probably do a raw copy from the CD to your hard disk This is better because it does not convert Digital to Analogue, then back again, losing accuracy in the process. It may be easier to just use Sound Recorder to make a copy in WAV format. One important thing to note, is to make sure the volume is not too loud! This is a fundamental error in most recordings, causing the signal to get clipped off, resulting in sound distortion. One way to check is to use the Sound Blaster's volume control, and ensure the oscilloscope does not exceed the edges of the window while recording.
Below are some of my favourite links and great places to get you started, or to visit. Please note that I do not take any responsibility for your use of the information on this page. Also note that there is no MP3 music stored anywhere on this page, nor will I give any away, so don't ask.
MP3 Links and Sites
Here is a selection of my favourite MP3 sites, take a look if you haven't seen them already.
This is the best MP3 player on the net. It is uncrippled shareware
(no nag) so you can use it without paying up. But you should! It consumes very few system resources, and supports playlists, MPEG 2.5,
graphic equalisers, rewind/fast forward, and ID3 tags. See the image at the top of
the page for an idea of what it looks like.
MP3 Links - This is one of
the better Links sites in the world. You should note that the best sites are
FTP. This means you will need an FTP program, such as CuteFTP. This provides a much better method for
mass downloading, or for auto-resuming an incomplete transfer.
The Real Top 50 Mp3 Sites - The top
50 MP3 sites! duh...
The Top 100 MP3 FTP And WWW Sites - No idea how good this is, or if it's still up. Should tell give you a few clues on where to go anyway.
MP3.COM - A very good site for informative purposes, and MP3 utilities.
Layer3.ORG - Great place to get MP3 players, encoders, CD rippers, skins, plug-ins, updates, and the latest news in the MP3 World.