On Sun, Aug 14, 2005 at 02:00:14AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: > On Sunday 14 August 2005 01:18, Paul Johnson wrote: > >On Saturday 13 August 2005 10:08 pm, Rishi wrote: > >> Hi > >> > >> Is there any program on Debian that can convert a wave file into > >> mp3? > > > >No, because of BMG Music's patent on MPEG Layer 3 encoders. There are > >unofficial packages for encoders (like lame) available from sources > >that can be readily found at http://www.apt-get.org/ . If you want a > >100% Debian's-idea-of-free way of accomplishing the same thing, look > >into the patent-unencumbered Ogg Vorbis format instead. > > Shame, you forgot to mention that ogg/vorbis files of the same source, and > the same size as the .mp3 files would be, sound better in almost any a/b > comparison. > I have to agree there as well. I digitize my church's sermons and put them online on our website. I chose ogg/vorbis for two reasons: - patents - size For obvious reasons I didn't want to go with wma/mp3/real/whatever. But the size issue was a real clincher as well. I encode at mono/22.05 kHz and most files that contain about 30 minutes of audio weigh in at about 8 MB. I think I experimented with mp3 for a few of them and found that typically they would be 25-50% bigger. With the 8 MB for 30 minutes, the size is small enough that someone can actually listen to it while downloading over a 56k connection. In the end, it is superior technology. It will be nice once more hardware starts supporting it. -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto
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