Advanced Audio Files Help (and other
technical stuff)
As
you may see, I've been experimenting a little with audio file types
that are alternatives to MP3's. As I continue to upload new audio to
the site, or enhance audio that is there already, I will try to make
the material available in two additional file types. These file types
are free and open source. I will explain a little later why this is a
really good thing. The downside with these file types is that that
there is not as much software available to play them, but I think it's
worth it.
There
are two new file types, Ogg and FLAC:
An Ogg file is a free, open source
"lossy" music file. A lossy file format simply means that the programme
that makes the .ogg file, takes data out of the original audio file
(generally an uncompressed file format like a WAV or AIFF file) to
create a smaller file size. Uncompressed file formats create a perfect
copy of the original audio, but they result in huge file sizes that are
impractical to offer up for download on a web site. The audio that is
on a commercially produced music CD is generally AIFF format. There is
an interesting piece on uncompressed audio file formats here.
The problem with lossy file formats is that, of course, they result in
lost audio quality. There is a trade off when you create the file,
between the best audio quality and the smallest file size. The MP3 is
the most universal of all the lossy audio formats, but it is not
technically the best, and it is a closed source, propitiatory product.
The Ogg file is, by contrast, a free open source product. Like a lot of
file formats like this, because it's free and open source, large
software corporations who make a load of money selling propitiatory
closed source software don't like it, as free software is a threat to
their business model (I met a guy from Microsoft at a conference once
and when I mentioned free
open source software, it
was like I swore at him....) , so you have to work a little harder to
play the files, but it is worth it. I'm pretty sure that, over time,
support for these formats will increase, as having a royalty and patent
free file format is a pretty attractive thing (you will see the
streaming file formats on wikipedia are Oggs) and it's also down to
people like me I think, to promote these formats, as the more people
that use them, the more pressure there will be on companies like
Microsoft and Apple to make software that is compatible with them.
More
Information on the Ogg format, and most importantly why it's better
than MP3, can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg
Available
for Windows, VLC
is a great free open source media player. Like the best, and worst, of
open source software it is very full featured, it will open almost any
file type you throw at it (and probably some that have not been
invented yet) but because it is so full featured, it can be a little
flaky at times, but it is perfectly good at playing Oggs and the
benefit of downloading it and playing about with it is you will
probably find out is does some things you never expected, or thought
you needed to buy software to do. I'm using VLC for all my testing of
the ability to play these files on Windows and it is working just fine.
VLC is freely available at http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
The VLC site seems a little "geeky" (again, one of the issues with the
open
source community), but you just need to select the Windows link for
"download
binaries". Remember, when
you
download new software that may play the same files as other software on
your machine (VLC will of course play MP3 files as well), to
remember to watch carefully when you install it what the installer
programme is doing, as it will at one stage, ask you if you want VLC
to be the "default audio player" (or words like that) for file types it
will play. If you only want to use it to play the Ogg files, remember
to uncheck the boxes for MP3, etc. Of course, you can right click on a
file in the "File Manager" in Windows and chose "Open With" if there
are multiple pieces of software on the machine to open one file type,
however having the default software for a certain file type change on
you can be a pain, so remember this step.
Also
Windows, the good old Winamp product (remember that, yes it is still
around) will also play Ogg files, and it can be downloaded for free
from www.winamp.com.
On
a Mac, you can get iTunes to play Ogg files with a bit of messing
about, and I may post links to the instructions here when I've figured
it out myself, but the easiest way just now is to use VLC as well.
If
you are one of the tiny minority of lucky people who, like me, use a
Linux free open source operating system, then you are in luck, as all
the audio software that comes as standard in the popular Linux
distributions will play Ogg "out of the box". I've tried it in Totem
and Rhythmbox and it works just fine.
The FLAC audio file format is my
favorite, it stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Unlike a lossy
format, like MP3 and Ogg, the FLAC does not lose any quality when you
create an audio file in the FLAC format from an uncompressed format
like WAV or AIFF. So you get the benefit of a smaller file size, but no
loss in sound quality. The FLAC is, of course, a larger file size than
an Ogg or an MP3, but these days, with most computer users in the West
connected to broadband and with storage getting larger and cheaper,
it seems reasonable now to offer up some lossless files. On a,
not very good 3 MB DSL connection, I can get a FLAC file to download in
around 20-30 seconds, so using these lossless files is now a real
possibility. Of
course, I'm only going to do this with the audio that is in decent
quality to begin with! Some of the live tapes of bands from the '80's
were pretty bad quality when they were made, so it seems a waste to
create a lossless file for audio that was not good quality in the first
place. But is is very interesting to try listening to the MP3 and then
listen to the same song in an uncompressed format, as you hear a huge
difference that you maybe would not notice if you only ever listened to
the MP3. Judging relative sound quality does depend a lot on the
equipment you use to listen to the song on, but I found when I was
listening to the FLAC files that I was realising what lossy encoders
were doing. A lot of the more subtle elements of the sound are audible
in the FLAC, that were gone in the MP3. It makes me think that the
whole move from traditional music CD sales to MP3 downloads is, at
present a bad thing, as the MP3's available on sites like the iTunes
store are pretty heavily compressed. For me, I'm still buying CDs and
hoping one day I can download lossless audio from commercial sites.
If
you get really adventurous and want to create CDs to play in a regular
hifi CD player from any of songs on this website, the FLAC files are
the ones to use.
On
Windows, the VLC player will play the FLAC file. On
Mac, VLC is also the way to go too, although I think iTunes will also
play it with a suitable plug in. On Linux, again we are in open source
heaven, and practically all the available audio players will be right
at home with FLAC.
I've
seen a few websites that started with good intentions, but the people
who maintained the websites tended to let some of their personal views
get in the way of what the website was meant to be about. But
www.kirkcaldybands.com will always be first and foremost a site that
archives and makes available again the music of the bands of Kirkcaldy
from the 1980's. That's why I've tucked away this rather lengthy
section on free open source audio file types as an "add on" to the
existing audio files help pages. If none of this interests you, then
just ignore it and keep downloading the MP3s. I will however, continue
to do my
small bit to advocate and make people aware of free and open source
software alternatives. This issue is not just a matter for geeks or
people who work in the IT industry like me. It's easy to think, sitting
here in the West, that everyone is on the Internet, but there is still
a huge "digital" divide in the world. Think how the Internet has
changed your lives and imagine how little of the global world
population is actually on the Internet. People, like me, believe that
the only way to bridge the digital divide is by the free open source
software movement and that the thought of American corporations like
Microsoft getting even richer and more powerful by locking people in
developing countries into their software, is a pretty horrifying
thought. So if seeing links to a few funny file types on
Kirkcaldybands.com has made you more aware of the issues around
bridging the digital divide, the I think that's a good thing.
I
also think that eventually, free open source software will dominate
computing. As an IT industry guy, but not one who is in a technical
job, I've found now that the free Linux operating systems have got,
almost, to a stage of their development that a "non geek" like me can
download them, install them on a regular PC or Intel Mac, and use them
pretty much as their main machine. So, given that this improvement in
the quality and availability of free open source software will
continue, and given the choice between being asked to pay for something
or using something that is free and does the same job - what would you
chose?
I
was going to write also somewhere a broader explanation of what the
terms "open source" and "free software" mean, but our old friend
Wikipedia (itself a pretty big friend of the free software movement) is
doing a good job itself, so here are some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
This
is a good piece also on the Digital Divide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide
The
free open source software I'm using to maintain this website is:
Operating
system:
HTML
Editor:
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
Audio
Editor: