How to download music?

me ^ | 6/22/08 | umgud

[umgud]

Old school Freeper needs tech help in downloading music. I've searched the net and can't find my answers.

[Malsua]

I mostly download WAV files. Contrary to what most people think, they are a “fraction” of the size of MP3’

WAVs are uncompressed. At the same quality level of recording, an MP3 will be up to 10 times smaller.

[aft_lizard]

But you do not and he does not need it at all. You download a bunch of songs off of AMazon, put a CD in your PC, drag and drop them onto your cd-r in XP and voila you have your music cd. Amazon is extremely easy to use, type name of music or genre find song and click to download which is on a highspeed server, and every song and CD is DRM free and very often you will find entire cd’s for less than 10 dollars and cheaper and individual tracks cheaper than 99 cents as well.

[Malsua]

Thanks papasmurf, I've been doing this for some time. I'll post a couple of WAV file songs that are low file size.

459KB Willie Nelson;
ON THE ROAD AGAIN That is a 24kbit MP3 encoded with the LAME encoder not a wav.

[newfreep]

I have a DVD of a music concert. Can the audio only (not the video) be burned to a CDR to play on a CD player?

[Malsua]

Thanks papasmurf, I've been doing this for some time. I'll post a couple of WAV file songs that are low file size.

459KB Willie Nelson;
ON THE ROAD AGAIN

That is a 24kbit MP3 encoded with the LAME encoder not a wav.

[papasmurf]

My answer, I thought, was relative to his desire to have his music on a CD to be played in a regular CD player. MP3’s won’t, to the best of my experience, wav’s will.

I don’t even concern myself with AAC, as I abhor needing authorization and DRM.

[Malsua]

Can the audio only (not the video) be burned to a CDR to play on a CD player?

Sure. Lots of ways to do this. Personally I would convert the DVD to DIVX(or AVI) format(google it, lots of free tools) then convert the DIVX/AVI to MP3 using "Media Converter SA"(the downloaded one, not the online one) also free.

There are other programs which can demux the audio out but since DVDs are multiple files, it's easier to convert it to one single Divx or AVI then get the audio out of that.

[Malsua]

Any CD burning software, Nero, Easy media creator, etc. that can make an Audio CD will automatically transition those files to WAVs for creation of the Audio CD during burning. You don’t even know it’s happening, it just does it. No biggie.

The downloaded MP3s from Amazon are usually 320bit or at least 192bit so when converted to WAVs for audio, there is no noticeable loss in sound quality when buring to an audio cd. Specially in a car with road noise.

[papasmurf]

“The downloaded MP3s from Amazon are usually 320bit or at least 192bit so when converted to WAVs for audio, there is no noticeable loss in sound quality when buring to an audio cd. Specially in a car with road noise.”

Anything more than 128-160k is overkill for my ears. LOL

[newfreep]

Thanks Malsua. I downloaded DIVX and totally confused as to which program to run and how to create MP3 or WAV files from DVD in my drive. Any suggestions is appreciated.

[Malsua]

Anything more than 128-160k is overkill for my ears. LOL

I can tell a 128kbit from a 192kbit with headphones on, it's slight but not enough for me to care. In a car with wind noise and everything else, there's no way to tell.

I think the original poster should download 30-40 minutes of MP3s he likes from Amazon...then we can talk him through getting them onto an Audio cd. My wife's 08 Honda WILL play MP3s as well as audio CDs...but I bought her an Ipod Nano instead. All in one place, no discs to deal with and easier to manage. Of course, the new Honda has an input jack so that sealed the deal.

[antiRepublicrat]

I wasn't able to play on PSP a bunch of stuff I bought from the iTunes store so I just burned the CD, imported it as high quality MP3s, and then dragged and dropped them into the PSP music folder.

A tip for retaining quality for your original versions: Re-import as Apple Lossless and you don't lose any quality but you now have non-DRM version in iTunes. You can later convert to MP3 for other devices, but you do lose quality. IIRC, the PSP also does AAC, so try that to get some better quality than MP3.

[ssaftler]

I’ve also used a lot of different programs, and, at the moment, my favorite is WinAmp (though that is subject to change). It does good ripping/burning, has decent library capabilities, and plays well with others.

I’ve found one thing that iTunes does that WinAmp (and others) doesn’t: iTunes will let you send your library or playlist to a standard output file or printer. Most of the others I’ve tried don’t, which is frustrating when I’m trying to standardize artist names, locations, etc. on my PCs. However, I’ve heard that iTunes is being blocked by corporate software programs, so you can’t use it at work. WinAmp and Windows Media doesn’t have this problem, which is a positive.

[antiRepublicrat]

My answer, I thought, was relative to his desire to have his music on a CD to be played in a regular CD player. MP3’s won’t, to the best of my experience, wav’s will.

A disk of MP3 or WAV files will not play on a regular CD player. The audio needs to be layed out on on the disk in Red Book (audio CD) format tracks with 16-bit PCM at 44,100 Hz. Now a WAV encoded exactly like that will just be laying the bitstream down in the right tracks, while most programs will convert the MP3 to that format before writing the audio tracks.

I don’t even concern myself with AAC, as I abhor needing authorization and DRM.

AAC doesn't have to be DRM. People only think that because most (not all) of the iTunes tracks are made that way. AAC as generally used is just MPEG-4 Part 3, as MP3 was MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 3. Any additions, such as DRM, are just vendor-specific implementations. Check it out, because the quality vs. bitrate is a LOT better than MP3 (128kb AAC = 192kb MP3, but with better frequency range).

[Malsua]

There are some tools to directly rip DVD to MP3 but just a cursory look and they all want some $20-$39. It would do an entire DVD in probably 20 minutes.

For the free route, you can use DVDx
http://www.wikihow.com/Rip-a-DVD-to-an-AVI-or-MPG-File-Using-DVDx

to make a Divx or AVI file.

Then use Media Converter SA to convert that divx/avi to an MP3.
http://www.mediaconverter.org/index.php?s=c&show=downloads

That’s gonna take a while depending on how long your DVD is.
You can also load the video into higher end video software like Adobe Premiere and extract the audio that way.

[antiRepublicrat]

I have a DVD of a music concert. Can the audio only (not the video) be burned to a CDR to play on a CD player?

First you need to rip the DVD. Get a program called HandBrake. I can't remember if that does audio stream only, but if it doesn't just tell it to convert your DVD to a movie file, streaming the audio straight through with no conversion.

Then install the free Virtual Dub and open the movie in it. This program has an option to strip your audio off into a WAV file for later conversion by iTunes or such, or straight into another format like MP3 if you have the appropriate filters installed.

[KevinB]

I may not know the whole story here, but that doesn't sound right. WAVs are uncompressed audio. If the WAV of a song is small, it's because the quality is very low or you really have an MP3 with a WAV file extension.

Correct. WAV files are very large, which is why only about fifteen songs in WAV format will fit on a 700 megabyte disk.

[antiRepublicrat]

But you do not and he does not need it at all. You download a bunch of songs off of AMazon, put a CD in your PC, drag and drop them onto your cd-r in XP and voila you have your music cd.

Dropping them onto a CD-R will not work in a normal CD player. They have to be converted, and you need a program for that. And I hate Windows Media Player (almost as much as Real Player). In iTunes I make a playlist, click a button, and the CD is burned. And even if you're using Amazon, you can just drop the songs onto iTunes.

[antiRepublicrat]

Check out Handbrake that I linked to. Some other FReeper (thankyouthankyouthankyou) suggested it a while back, and it has been my hands-down favorite since then. For Mac and PC.

[processing please hold]

Bookmarked. Thanks, papa.