How did I miss Musepack?
I recently downloaded some music and discovered the files all had an unrecognized extension: .mpc. It turns out MPC files are MusePack encoded music files. MusePack is a high-def audio codec like MPEG-3, but without the patent encumbrances. It’s pretty open source, w/ a bunch of tools on the usual platforms.
Unfortunately, it’s fairly obscure, and I’m sure my LinkSys Wireless Music System won’t play it, so I want to convert it back to MP3. dbPowerAMP Music Converter seems to do the trick.
How I (Would) Find and Download Music and Software
I have a..erm..friend, who had been leeching warez for more than a decade, and music for at least half that long. The techniques and technologies employed in this pursuit have changed alot over that time. I don’t often run across a concise yet comprehensive account of what exactly is involved in breaking the law in this particular way, so I thought I’d jot them down.
First, there are a wide range of sources for warez and mp3s; a google search for ‘warez’ or ‘brittany spears mp3′ is not among them. Frauds and search spammers have more or less taken over these keywords, and even if they hadn’t, RIAA and SPA spiders would find and shut down any legitimate sources.
Summary
There are three technologies that most reliably yield results:
- Peer-to-peer networks like eDonkey (best), Gnutella2, Morpheus, WinMX, etc
- BitTorrent search engines
- USENET
If you’re going to use a P2P network, be very careful when selecting and downloading a P2P client. Most have spyware, especially the ones that claim to have no spyware. The only P2P client I would trust is Shareaza, and only then because of its solid reputation and freely accessible source code. Shareaza uses the eDonkey network, though it also provides a BitTorrent client.
BitTorrent engines help you find torrents, but you still have to download them with a BitTorrent client, like Shareaza, Azureus, or a handful of others. As with P2P clients, beware spyware in commercial clients.
USENET is (and always has been) the dirty little secret of the scene. The RIAA, MPAA, and SPA seem ignorant of its existence, yet it is on USENET that one can find the widest range of binaries, from MP3s and videos to e-books and appz.
P2P
Download and install Shareaza, then start it up. The docs and support forum are pretty helpful. Make sure Shareaza reports a ‘HighID’ on eDonkey; the docs will provide details, but if you don’t get a ‘HighID’ (and instead get a ‘LowID’), it means your firewall/router isn’t providing incoming access to Shareaza from the Internet, and thus your download performance will suffer greatly.
Searching is pretty straightforward; the same principles one would apply to Google apply to P2P searches. Note that search results will trickle in as the P2P client explores the P2P network looking for your files; the first results should come in after only a few seconds, but the result set should build out over the next minute or two.
BitTorrent
Several BitTorrent search engines have been strong-armed into shutting down by the various copyright oligarchs, but a few good ones remain. Of these, TorrentSpy and PirateBay are the best. When they find torrents you want, download the .torrent file and open it with your BitTorrent client; the client will take care of the rest.
As with Shareaza, you need to make sure incoming connections to your BitTorrent client are working, or your performance will suffer. Azureus has a Network Test utility to verify this; others likely do as well. RTFM.
USENET
There’s a reason USENET is a secret: it’s a pain in the ass to work with. Traditionally, you connected to USENET via an NNTP server provided by your ISP. You had to use a special NNTP client, like Forte Agent. For reasons yet unknown to science, all NNTP clients suck profoundly, sporting either UIs so austere and inscrutable as to be the product of an autistic sadist genius, or so functionally limited they could be targeted your grandmother.
Fortunately, this is changing. For years, DejaNews (now Google Groups have provided a web-based, searchable index of the enourmous expanse of text postings on USENET. Now, services are appearing to do the same with the binaries.
EasyNews is ideal IMHO, though GigaNews is also ok. At some point you’ll likely end up needing an NNTP client, in which case AnchorDudes has a decent list, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Handy Tools
Apart from limitless disk space, if you’re downloading MP3s you owe it to yourself to download the MusicBrainz tagger. Whenever you get MP3s from anyone else, you can be certain the ID3 tags (the bits on each MP3 that indicate the track, album, artist, etc) will not be right. MusicBrainz automatically looks up and corrects the tags via a shared database of music fingerprints. The UI is not particularly intuitive, but the effort required to figure it out is well worth it, particularly if you build up an enormous MP3 collection.
Portable Media Player & Car Audio — Should it be this hard?
I’m considering upgrading my current portable media solution (a dated Sony MiniDisc player, the old 5 hour kind, dated but oh-so-cheap) to a more trendy microdrive-based player. I’ve narrowed the field to the Apple iPod Mini, and the Creative Zen Micro, with the Zen in the lead based on better features, replaceable battery, and not being the iPod.
With either model, I’ll need a way to play audio in the car. My MD player came in a car kit, which included a cassette adapter (yes, my car is that old), a mounting pouch, and a cigarette lighter power adapter, plus a remote that mounts in the center console. I don’t strictly speaking require the remote, but some sort of adapter for my in-car audio system, a mount of some sort, and a charging solution are mandatory.
The charging situation is pretty easy; car chargers are available in all conceivable permutations, and are reasonably cheap. The mounting problem has also been solved innumerable ways for both the iPod and the Zen Micro.
However, the audio integration is where it becomes complicated. The naive solution is to use an FM transmitter, either 12v or battery powered. It plugs into the headphone jack of your player, and transmits the audio on an FM station. You then tune your car radio to that station, and hear your music through your car radio.
This is great, but for a serious problem: the audio sucks. In urban areas it can be hard to find an unused FM station so the transmitter can operate without interference, and even w/ a clear FM band, the FM transmitter operates at such low power that random static interference is still a problem, particularly if your FM antenna is at the back of your car.
The other alternative is an FM modulator, which installs in your car between your antenna and your radio. This is the option I’m leaning towards, as it is the least shitty option I can come up with.