[pianotech] MP3 on Website

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, David,

At 10:23 AM 12/14/2011, you wrote:
>I've put some MP3  files on my website. The whole website venture is 
>a bit new for me. It ocurred to me that I have one or two vinyl LP 
>records from before 1961, which means that if recorded in the UK, 
>they are now out of copyright.  So I recorded one, of a great 
>pianist of the past, to Audio CD and then ripped as MP3 files, and 
>have uploaded some to my site. See if you like the playing, and 
>please forgive the crackles.

Thanks very much for posting this.  Very interesting recordings.

If you do very much of this kind of thing, and, since you mention 
"the crackles", I suggest using one of the "lossless" compression 
formats (ALAC, FLAC, MPEG-4, etc) rather than a "lossy" one like 
AAC/mp3/ogg-vorbis/etc because any of the latter literally discard 
any data which fall outside their compression parameters.  That is, 
there is not only amplitude compression, there is also frequency 
compression; both accomplished by simply excluding amplitude and 
frequency ranges outside those considered "necessary" to have enough 
program to be recognizable.  There are pretty good discussions of 
this subject at these two locations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_data_compression

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossless_data_compression

If you listen primarily through an iWhatever using earbuds, or when 
driving about, then a lossy compression algorithm is probably the way 
to go.  The choice of which algorithm is probably largely going to 
have to do with if you use Apple products or PC/other 
platforms.  Stick with whatever is native for whatever device(s) you 
are using for best/most consistent results.

If you are after relatively serious archival storage and retrieval 
(and, you listen primarily via reasonably good equipment in a 
relatively quiet environment), then you'll probably wind up 
preferring a lossless algorithm.  While there are nearly as many 
debates about which of these to use as there are about what kinds of 
voicing techniques to use on pianos, it seems like most people wind 
up using FLAC, WAV or AIFF.  Each have advantages and disadvantages; 
and there is lots to read on the web about which does what the best.

Much depends on your goals for the end product.  I've been doing 
restoration and digitizing of older recordings (vinyl, tape, wire, 
etc) for a long time; and do have some suggestions for products to 
help with this process.

For general "ripping" of recordings from CDs, it's hard to beat 
dBpoweramp.  It's reasonably priced, fairly easy to learn, and, 
importantly, doesn't really tacitly require a dedicated 
machine/workstation.  Here's a link:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

For more "serious" and/or involved projects, including ones that 
require at least some degree of electronic editing, GoldWave is the 
value-for-cost leader, hands-down.  Here's a link:

http://www.goldwave.com/

Both of these have a variety of "add-ons" and/or "plug-ins" which 
provide additional functionality, including "crackle" diminution (it 
really cannot be "removed" with products built at this 
price-point).  Some of these add-ons/plug-ins are free, others incur 
additional costs.

I suspect that, between them, the above two products will do about 
99% of what most people want that isn't already covered by iTunes, 
whatever M$ is calling the latest version of MediaPlayer, or any 
number of shareware products.

If you want to get into the higher end of things, the cost goes up 
fairly quickly.  The fairly basic set of software tools I regularly 
use have a total current purchase price of nearly 20K USD (although 
at least one of them may be available for less in the EU).  Moreover, 
in order for them to function efficiently and effectively, require a 
fairly powerful dedicated workstation.  Also, while products like 
these were originally developed for various Apple platforms, more 
recent programs have been designed largely for either dedicated 
platforms or Windows.

If you want any additional information, I'll be glad to help out as I 
can.  This area can get very complicated very quickly.  I've been 
doing it for my own purposes and for a number of interested private 
clients for quite a while and think that one could go just as far off 
the deep end here as one can trying to tune a unison....

Kind regards.

Horace