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Grex Micros Item 216: Aargh! (MP3 problems)
Entered by jshafer on Tue Sep 28 03:52:05 UTC 1999:

I've been trying on and off for weeks to rip some MP3s, with little or 
no luck.  I've tried a number of different freeware, shareware and demo 
products, with varying results.  Currently I'm trying Xing's Audio 
Catalist, which seems like quite a nice program.  I got it to work 
once, but usually it spins up the disk, sits there for a bit, then 
errors out saying "ASPI didn't answer."  Typically this kills Windows 
but good, and I end up having to reach for the reset button.

Equipment:
   Pentium II with 160 meg RAM
   Win98 release 2
   Creative Labs PC-DVD 2x (model # currently unknown; I need to pull 
                            the drive and check on it...)
   Philips CDRW 400-series (not currently set up to play audio CDs)

What I've done so far:
   I tried to check Creative's web site and windrivers.com, but every 
   time I thought I was getting close to something useful it would 
   fail to load the page.

   I dragged toking over to look at it.  He made better progress than 
   I did, but we still didn't get it working properly.


Oh, and while I'm at it, What the heck does ASPI stand for?

8 responses total.

#1 of 8 by wolfg676 on Tue Sep 28 06:52:23 1999:

ASPI stands for "Advanced SCSI Programming Interface". (thanks goes to
Adaptec's website).

I'd check out mp3.com for info on various programs and their compatibility
with various drives. Last I saw, they had a very good list. Check out:
http://www.mp3.com/help/rookie/convert.html
I must say I have to chuckle a bit at the troubles that people seem to have
with the newer CD-ROM/DVD drives and ripping audio. I just upgraded to a K6-2
450 (o/c to 500) with 128MB, but I kept my old Mitsumi 8x CD drive. Mainly
because it's reliable, and it's not a "vibramatic" drive like the new 32-50x
CD and 6x DVD drives. And it rips audio at a full 8x. :)
I use Easy CD-DA Extractor 3 to rip, and the Fraunhoffer encoder. Works
beautifully.

#2 of 8 by gull on Tue Sep 28 16:41:22 1999:

Under Linux, 'cdparanoia' is an *excellent* CD ripper.  It'll rip clean WAVs
off CDs that don't even play right.

#3 of 8 by darkskyz on Thu Sep 30 01:25:25 1999:

if you are looking for a winblows program, MusicMatch Jukebox is very good,
and is free unless you want the highest quality ripping. i can't tell the
difference between the cd and the "near-cd quality"(96kbps) and see no reason
to pay the 30$ for the cd-quality version (118kbps+)
I ripped several cds, and it works very well. it can also connect to the CDDB
(compact disk data base) and attempt to identify which cd you have in the
drive (which saves you the trouble of writting the albom/artist/song stuff
by ourself)

#4 of 8 by jshafer on Thu Sep 30 04:58:06 1999:

Thanks; I did check out a few of the FAQs at mp3.com, but I don't think 
I got to that page.  I won't get a chance to try again until Saturday 
at the earliest...

#5 of 8 by raven on Tue Oct 26 06:24:04 1999:

I had good luck converting .wavs to mps with the win shareware NexEncoder.

#6 of 8 by gull on Tue Oct 26 23:06:05 1999:

BladeEnc is another good freeware WAV to MP3 program.  There are versions
for Windows and for Linux.  (The sound quality and speed is unlikely to
differ much among the freeware encoders; I think they're all based on the
same l3enc demonstration code, which was never particularwell ly optomised.)

#7 of 8 by hhsrat on Sat Dec 11 04:21:13 1999:

RealJukebox can now rip MP3's.  It has pretty good quality on my P133 
with 32 meg ram, as long as I didn't have anything else open at the same 
time.

#8 of 8 by gull on Sun Dec 12 01:03:30 1999:

Has anyone heard about the revelation that RealJukebox was tracking people's
listening habits and reporting back to Real?  Supposedly they've taken that
out in the new versions, after the uproar over it.

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