Tip:
Looking for a new way to store and play digital files? Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format that compares with MP3 and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and un-patented.
The names need some explanation: 1. The Xiph.org Foundation calls itself “a non-profit corporation dedicated to protecting the foundations of Internet multimedia from control by private interests;” 2. Ogg “is a multimedia container format, and the native file and stream format for the Xiph.org multimedia codecs;” and 3. Ogg Vorbis “is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format.”
Vorbis is a high quality format that compresses to a smaller file size than the other formats. If your music becomes popular, so does your bandwidth. Vorbis also provides a comment header where you can put in notes about yourself and your music. Since Vorbis is patent-free, you do not have to pay any royalties. By the way, were you aware that, if you sell your music in MP3, the patent owner (Fraunhofer) receives a percentage of each sale?
Start by downloading the VLC media player and streaming server. VLC, or VideoLAN Client, is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Import some of your music from iTunes to see how it works and then play with the equalizer.
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