Mac Daniel's Advice

MP3 and the Mac, Part 1

Low End Mac Reader Specials

Memory To Go Special: New 2008 iMac 2GB $42 / iMac Intel Core2 DUO & MacBook Pro 2GB $36 - 1GB $20. MacPro 8 Core Memory 8GB kit $286 / 4GB kit $143 / 2GB kit $93 -- Free shipping available. LIfetime warranty.

Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com

LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, iMac's, Apple Batteries and Apple A/C Adapters. Also Great prices on Used Apple Computers. Call 1-800-941-7654 Click Here.

OWC: NewerTech NuPower Batteries for iBook and PowerBooks Designed+Built in USA to run longer, LAST LONGER TOO! Free Battery Recycling Return Label; Quality High-Capacity from $99.95

Mac users can finally play Party Poker for Mac. Not only that, they can also learn how to play PokerStars for Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, laptops, and LCD TVs side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for a new cell phone GPS products or MP3 players. The Ciao network makes searching products easy for you.

Korin Hasegawa-John - 2002.05.14

Now that Napster is dead and the RIAA is attempting to put tighter controls on CD use, you might wonder "Is the 'revolutionary' MP3 audio compression scheme dead?" Not by a long shot. (Alternatively, you might wonder "What in the world is MP3, and why is/was it revolutionary?" - read on.)

MP3, for those who have been living in a fallout shelter since about 1998 or have been obsessively avoiding the news since then (or just those not interested in music and CD burning and everything else) is a compression format. It can compress a CD quality song into about 1/8 to 1/10 of its original size without very much loss in quality. Basically, this means that you can store 8 times more data in the same place. A 70 minute CD holds about 650 MB, whereas in MP3 format it would be equivalent to 65-80 MB depending on quality.

Now back onto the main track.

Unlike Napster, MP3s are alive and well. Their use has changed slightly, however. Now MP3s on the Mac side of things are primarily used for storing a person's CD collection on their Mac. They are also used for creating custom CD mixes. The most popular MP3 player and encoder on the Mac is iTunes, which is available free from Apple. iTunes allows you to burn custom CDs from your MP3 collection using a CD burner. A third use of MP3s is to carry large amounts of music on the move with an MP3 player, such as the iPod or Creative's Nomad series.

MP3 files can still be downloaded over the Internet using software such as Mactella, Furi, or LimeWire. All of these clients use Gnutella, which is a peer-to-peer file sharing service. Peer-to-peer means that there is no central database of files, making this type of service much harder to shut down. Napster functioned with a central database, so when this database was shut down, the service was rendered useless. A downside of peer-to-peer is that finding files is much slower. There was a recent Mac Daniel article on these clients, What Is Gnutella?, so I won't address this.

Once a group of songs is encoded to MP3 (called "ripping"), a CD can be burned with it. iTunes is the easiest software for this. To make a new CD, just create a new playlist and drag the songs you want to the list. The playlist should not exceed 60-70 minutes, depending on the capacity of the CD-Rs (called "blanks"). Your blanks should be labeled with their playing time.

A note about burning and blanks: If you're buying new blank CDs, name-brand CDs work the best and most consistently. They tend to be more expensive, but in the long run they are more cost effective because fewer are wasted. Recommended brands include Memorex (my personal favorite), Sony, and Maxell. Blank CDs are compatible with different speeds. In general this isn't a big deal, but if you have a 24x burner and try to use 12x compatible CDs, they'll be toast unless you burn at the lower speed. You can change the speed at which your burner will burn CDs. In general, set this to the fastest possible speed, but never go beyond the top speed of your blanks.

Once you have assembled your playlist, pop a blank in your drive and just hit the "burn CD" button in the upper right corner. (You have to hit it twice, a safety feature.) After a while, depending on your Mac's speed, the number of songs, and burner speed (in general, 8-35 minutes, since the computer must decode the information before writing it to the CD). Your CD will be ejected as soon as it is finished, and before doing anything at all, grab a Sharpie and write something informative on the CD - not just "Mix" or "Mix 1," but something like "Mix 1" and then "incl. Blink 182, Counting Crows, Simon and Garfunkel, and The Beatles," for example. I have a lot of discs that I have no idea what is on them, so it's a good idea to start out labeling.

After you've diligently labeled your new CD, it's time to test it. If all goes well, when you press "Play" it'll work, and you'll be rocking (or swinging, or funking, or whatever) to your own custom CD. Have fun, but keep it down so the cops don't come. ;-)

Next time: MP3 players, the Mac and MP3s.

Not sure if you should upgrade your old Mac or replace it? Check the Mac Daniel index to see if we've already addressed your problem.

Recent Mac Daniel columns

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2008 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.


Have a question?
Ask an expert!

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Best Used Macs
Video Cards
Email Lists
InfoMac's Low
End Mac Forum

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
MacMall
TechRestore
MacResQ
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.