Chapter 12. Make Your Own MP3 Files
Hotshot audio formats get all the news these days, but when you get right down to it, MP3 is the king of the hill. MP3 is not only the most ubiquitous digital music format on the planet, it’s also the most portable.
Why make your own MP3 files? If you have an existing music collection—be it CDs or old records or tapes—you may want to convert it to a compressed format so you can organize it and play it with a jukebox program on your computer or with a portable player. If you’re a musician, you may want to make your songs available as downloads or via Internet radio. If you’ve purchased songs in a proprietary format such as WMA, you may want to convert them to a standard format such as MP3 to make them compatible with your iPod or other portable player.
This chapter teaches you how to create MP3 files from prerecorded music and how to convert other digital audio formats to MP3. It shows you how to obtain the best sound quality for your MP3s and how to troubleshoot problems. You’ll learn how to create MP3 files using iTunes, Media Jukebox, and Musicmatch, as well as how to convert other digital audio formats to MP3.
The examples in this chapter use the MP3 format, but many of the same general principles and procedures apply to creating files in other compressed formats, such as AAC, Ogg Vorbis, and WMA.
Different Paths to MP3
Creating MP3 files can be thought of as an extension, or post-process, to the recording and ripping processes covered in the last ...
Get Digital Audio Essentials now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
