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ZT |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 4:33 AM
Edited Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 4:43 AM Anytime you resample or re-encode lossy audio you lose fidelity. This means that when you record the 91x stream and then convert it to mp3 (even if you go from the stream to wav to mp3), you're losing fidelity -- a substaintial amount. So, from a fidelity standpoint, it would be better to leave recordings from the 91x stream in wma. I just found some free software to rip wma streams. It's cool. http://sdp.ppona.com/ My portable digial audio player, the RipDrive, also plays WMAs. I don't think I currently have a single WMA on it, but it does play them. :) In other words, enough stuff seems to support WMA. It seems like a good idea. I'm going to play with this for a couple of days, I try to get WMA versions of the show up. —ZT |
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Chrispy |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 6:29 AM If this was a music program, I'd probably totally agree with you.. Instead, for talk radio, I don't care a whole lot about the fidelity. The shorter download times and smaller file sizes are more important to me. —Chrispy |
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Chrispy |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 6:29 AM ..but lemme know how it works! I'm all curious now. —Chrispy |
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ZT |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 7:44 AM The 91x stream is 33kbits/second. Some of the mp3s I see people make from it are 56kbits/second. So, if you compare it to that, the file from the straight rip from the 91x be something like 40% smaller and higher quality. —ZT |
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Chrispy |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 7:47 AM Wow. I didn't even think about that.. go for it. *me want* —Chrispy |
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oh-for |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 10:15 AM Thanks ZT, I went to the link and the ripdrive is no longer available. That's like saying you had a smoking hottie ready to give me some oral, but now she's gone. Nice. —oh-for |
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ZT |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 10:39 AM
Edited Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 10:49 AM That sucks. The only place they failed was the lack of marketing, and maybe not having better firmware upgrades. But all and all it really is a great product. It looks like you can still find them at other places online though. Amazon, ebay, Target, Pricegrabber The thing that sold me on it (at the time when I bought it, over a year ago now) was the on-the-fly mp3 recording, and that they didn't fall apart like the Archos ones (all the reviews said they lasted about a week). Though the FM Tuner, and WMA support were also a big plus. It's good for bootlegging shows and recording lectures, etc. —ZT |
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steve |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 11:05 AM ZT -- I'll give it a try with tonight's show -- I'll send the usual mp3 to the NJC sites along with a wma version -- by the way, which is best to use? -- I see that my options are: wma 9 lossless, wma 9 voice and wma v7 -- I'm assuming wma 9 lossless is the highest quality? —steve |
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steve |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 11:20 AM Wait -- what happened? I just converted Thursday night's show to wma and it went from 37MB to 285MB. Is there some other setting I need to change? Anyway, I gotta run, but I'll check this thread later on tonight. —steve |
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Dark Laith |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 11:53 AM In my experience, WMA files are generally smaller than their MP3 counterparts. Why would you convert them at all? —Dark Laith |
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ZT |
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 3:26 PM
Edited Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 3:33 PM Wait -- what happened? I just converted Thursday night's show to wma and it went from 37MB to 285MB. Is there some other setting I need to change? —steve What are you using? It sounds like you're converting an mp3 to a non-lossy WMA, which software allows you to do though it really doesn't make sense. :) The advantage to doing what I suggested is that theres no format conversion or resampling/re-encoding involved in the process -- all of that is bad for the audio quality. In a nutshell heres what I do/did: 1.) Download sdp here http://sdp.ppona.com/.
2.) unzip, install, and run sdp 2.0
3.) Go to Click on the green "Open" Button or go to File -> Open. and then paste the 91x direct link in to the textbox. It's in the faq, or you can just cut and paste this: mms://ccdig.liquidviewer.com/xtra.
4.) Click the Red "Go" button.
5.) Pick where you want to save the file of the recording, and the name, and click "Save."
6.) When you're done, click the blue "Abort" button.
7.) You're done! :)
8.) Though, you might want to make note of the VCR option. You can set it to automatically record at a given time daily. Unforrunately, theres no weekly schedule option. I started on a hack that would fix that, but I haven't finished it yet. What you'll have when you're done is a 100% authentic copy of what was streamed -- unless your internet connection is flakey, or something like that. What you want to avoid doing -- espeically with lossy input that's already low quality is converting it from one format to another format (wma to mp3), or re-encoding it. Doing this always adds more digital artifacts (the "drain pipe sounds", etc) to the audio and in general reduces the fidelity. This is especially true when your source is already encoded at a pretty low-bitrate (like the 91x stream -- 33kbps). If all of this sounds a little greek to you, you might want check out the wikipeida article on lossy compression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy I'll get a WMA of tonight's show and post it online, if you're interested in comparing. —ZT |
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ZT |
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Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 2:05 PM
Edited Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 2:07 PM Heres the show from last night, encoded from the 91x stream using SDP, and ASFTools to cut out the commericals -- I think I missed a few, but I figure this is kind of a "proof of concept" so it's not a big deal. It's 25.4 MB. It's better quality than the one floating around on the web mirrors which is 39.2 megs, and it's about 35% smaller. Though, I'm not sure if that one has commericals or not so that may not be a completely accurate comparison.
—ZT |
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steve |
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Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 5:17 PM ZT -- can you start and stop SDP in the middle of a recording? -- Meaning, I don't actually edit my shows -- I just push "stop" when they go to break and "start" when they come back. —steve |
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jeremycobert |
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Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 10:20 PM for all the non geeks, if you want to do this the easy way, just use a program called replay radio. 30$ and it records the show, fitlers out commercials and converts it to mp3.
ive been using this on the sunday and monday night shows, and then listen to them on my morning drive to work.
—jeremycobert |
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ZT |
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Tuesday, March 15, 2005 at 11:53 PM The non-geeks can just download it from the web, bit torrent, the direct connect hub, or usenet (though you kind of have to be a little bit of a geek to use usenet). :) My point was that for the people who encoded it, if they wanted to record the show from the 91x stream in the way that made the most sense, this would be how to do it. The smart way and the easy way usually aren't the same things. Being around KBFR as long as I was, I learned the ins and outs of digital audio pretty well... It bothers me to see precious audio unintentionally mistreated. :) —ZT |
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ZT |
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Friday, March 18, 2005 at 12:55 AM I'm going to delete that link in a few hours. For some reason I feel obligated to give you all a warning Henry Scudder style. —ZT |
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