NHNE Miscellaneous:
Need Some Help (Includes MP3 Primer)
Friday, September 17, 1999
Friday, September 17, 1999
Hello Everyone!
If you read the last update I sent out (http://www.nhne.com/updates/0060.html),
you probably noticed that we are continuing our efforts to establish
a regular source of income for NHNE. To date, we've got eBuds, WebBuds,
sporadic advertisers, and nine "Friends of NHNE" making regular
monthly donations to NHNE. Unfortunately, none of these income streams
is producing enough money to keep our noses above water, so I need to
ask for your help again. Specifically, we've got a bill for 325.00 from
our primary listserve provider (NHNE maintains five different email
lists -- the NHNE Mailing List, NHNE's Forum for a Common Understanding,
the Sedona Y2K Discussion List, the Pathwork Discussion List, and the
NHNE Y2K List. One of these lists is free, while the other four each
cost about 25.00 a month.) On top of the juicy listserve provider bill
(which is for six months of service), we also have phone, ISP, and software
upgrade bills that are begging for relief.
If you can help out, please do. And to grease the wheels a little, I'll
give those of you who make a donation of 20.00 or more your choice of
one of the following items (while supplies last):
1. An Utne Y2K Citizen's Action Guide
2. Imagine (a book by yours truly)
3. "Lift Us Up, Carry Us Away" (an album that yours truly
recorded in
1986 with a handful of friends)
An album? Yes, but since we're not talking about a top-ten CD-qualilty
recording here, I won't be blowing my horn too loudly. I have, however,
posted three songs from the album on the NHNE Website for those of you
who might be tempted...
http://www.nhne.com/mp3/index.html
If you feel the nudge to help us get our noses above water, you can
make credit card donations via:
Website: http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html
eMail: nhne@nhne.com
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492
Please remember to include your name, credit card number and expiration
date.
Checks can be made out to "NHNE" and sent to:
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339
All contributions are, of course, tax deductible (and much appreciated).
If you decide to make a donation of 20.00 or more, please indicate which
item, if any, you would like me to send to you -- and be sure and include
your mailing address.
If you make a donation of any size, and are not presently on the Friends
of NHNE Mailing List, and would like to be, just let me know and it
will be my pleasure to include.
------------
AN MP3 PRIMER
Ok, let's imagine you feel the urge to donate a few buckeroos to NHNE
and are thinking about asking me to send you a copy of the album --
but you want to check out one or two of the songs I've got posted on
the Web before taking the plunge.
How do you do it?
Well, the three songs that are posted have all been converted to an
audio file called "MP3". I was planning to tell you about
the MP3 revolution in the next issue of Smorgasbord, but since you are
going to need to know something about it before you can listen to the
songs I have posted on the Web, here's a quick primer:
Simply put, MP3 is a new kind of music format that is taking the music
world by storm. It allows CD-quality audio files to be compressed into
bite-size files that can be easily downloaded off the Net and/or passed
from one computer to another.
If you are a musician with a message to get out to the world, you can
now post your music on a website and people from all over the world
can easily download it. There are, in fact, a growing number of MP3
websites that have sprung into existence to make this kind of music
available -- often for free.
And if you are a music lover, well, a whole new world is opening up
to you. Whereas before you had to track down the music you wanted in
stores, or mail order companies, now you can download it off the web,
a song or album at a time, at reduced prices. And, again, a growing
number of songs, from all kinds of musicians, from all over the world,
are becoming available for free.
Where do you start?
The first place I would send those of you who want to find out more
about this explosive new media is to the current issue of TIME DIGITAL:
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/reports/mp3/
If you click on the above link, you will be taken to a well-written
overview that tells you all about MP3. The article revolves on a young
fellow named Justin Frankel. And Justin, as fate would have it, is the
son of Kathleen Blake who is a dear friend of mine (and NHNE's main
holistic health advisor). Justin is important because he created the
most popular MP3 player on the planet. If you use a PC, you'll want
to visit, and probably download, Justin's MP3 player, which is called,
"WinAmp." You can find it here:
http://www.winamp.com/
While Justin's MP3 player is the most popular PC player on the planet,
there are a growing legion of MP3 players popping up all over the place.
If you want to check out some of the competition, here's where you can
find a good list of them, complete with feature overviews and ratings:
http://www.mp3.com/software/
For those of you who are based on Macs (like most of us at NHNE are),
you can find a list of Mac MP3 players at this address:
http://www.mp3.com/software/mac/players.html
After testing several of them myself, MacAmp is my first choice:
http://www.at-soft.net/download/macamp-1.0-preview.hqx
Followed by Audion:
http://www2.macnn.com/audion_1.0.sit.bin
So far, I've talked about MP3 files and how to play them. But let's
say you've got a great collection of CDs and you want to grab a few
special songs off them, turn them into MP3 files, and put them on your
computer so you can play them whenever you want and organize them into
a multitude of creative playlists. Or let's say you want to grab music
off a file on your computer, or pump it in from a tape recorder, record
player, or stereo, or record yourself singing. What do you do?
Well, in the old days (a few months ago), you had to use one software
program to "rip" the song you wanted off your CD and convert
it into a "wav" file. Then you had to use another program
to turn ("encode") the "wav" file into an MP3 file
before you could play it on your MP3 player. If you will read the list
of features that come with a growing number of MP3 players today, you
will find that more and more of them are offering all of these functions
-- at least in the PC world. In the Mac world, which is still a few
steps behind their PC brethren, the ripping and encoding part of the
equation is still not integrated into most MP3 players. But for us,
there's a great little program called "AudioCatalyst":
http://www.xingtech.com/products/audiocatalyst/
AudioCatalyst is also very popular in the PC world.
In the past week, I have used AudioCatalyst to "rip" numerous
tracks off my favorite CDs. And today, I used it to rip and encode three
songs off my cassette-based album: I plugged a cassette player into
the microphone port on my iMac and told AudioCatalyst to record the
incoming music -- and a couple minutes later the song I played was captured
and converted into an MP3 file that I uploaded to the website. Could
it be any simpler?
I don't know how many of you are going to find this information helpful,
but I felt like I stumbled across a gold mine so I wanted to share it
with all of you.
Finally, here are a few more indispensable MP3 links:
BEST MP3 WEBSITES:
MP3.Com:
http://www.mp3.com
Amazon.Com:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/music/download/download.html/ref
=m_mh_mn_dd/002-5924916-4531619
MP3Now.Com:
http://206.204.104.72/
BEST MP3 SEARCH ENGINES:
MP3.Lycos:
http://mp3.lycos.com/
Mp3Seek.Com:
http://www.seekmp3.com/cgi-bin/advanced.htm
Palavista - Digital Music Metacrawler:
http://www.palavista.com/
MORE GENERAL INFO ON MP3
(Major links from the Time Digital article):
How to Do It:
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/reports/mp3/howto.html
The Best MP3 Sites:
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/reports/mp3/sites.html
MP3 Artists:
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/reports/mp3/artists.html
The Hardware:
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/digital/reports/mp3/hrdware.html
------------
And that's it for now. Until next time, I send you all my best.
With Love & Best Wishes,
David Sunfellow
P.S. If there are any musicians out there with music they would like
to share with the folks in our network, drop me a line. I'm looking
into the possibility of creating an archive of MP3 hits for spiritually-oriented
folks...
------------
David Sunfellow, Founder & Publisher
NewHeavenNewEarth (NHNE)
a 501(c)3 non-profit organization
P.O. Box 2242
Sedona, AZ USA 86339
Primary eMail: nhne@nhne.com
Secondary eMail: nhne@wildapache.net
NHNE: http://www.nhne.com/
wild2k: http://www.wild2k.com/
eBuds: http://www.nhne.com/ebuds/
Phone: (928) 282-6120
Fax: (815) 346-1492
Current NHNE Posts:
http://dispatch.mail-list.com/archives/nhnelist/
Subscribe NHNE Mailing List:
send a blank message to <nhnelist-on@mail-list.com>
Subscribe NHNE Y2K List:
send a blank message to <nhney2k-subscribe@onelist.com>
Appreciate what we are doing?
You can say so with a tax-deductible donation:
http://www.nhne.com/main/donations.html
