BOC: MP3 audio files available

[Paul Mather]

With the recent talk of making MPEG layer 3 audio files of bootlegs
available, I decided to give it a try!  My first sample is the two 1972
live tracks they left off the _Workshop of the Telescopes_ "best of"
set, namely "Buck's Boogie" and "Cities On Flame."

I extracted these two tracks from the bootleg CD I have entitled _Live
in New York, 1972_.  (I think the tracks on this CD are collectively
known as _The Elektra EP_, since they were a demo of the band for that
label, recorded live.  Check the FAQ for details.)  I encoded the
resultant data using l3enc v200 with a 128 Kbit/s bitrate.  You can
access the layer 3 MPEG files via anonymous ftp on gromit.dlib.vt.edu,
in directory /pub/boc-l (ftp://gromit.dlib.vt.edu/pub/boc-l/).  They are
"bucks_boogie.l3-128k" (4879 KB) and "cities_on_flame.l3-128k" (4373
KB).  (This is roughly a 10:1 saving over the original, uncompressed
audio.)

The CD these were taken from sounds like it was mastered from
vinyl, since you can occasionally hear clicks and pops on the CD.  The
fidelity is not exactly very high, but the energy is good in the
performance.  I've not done any postprocessing: just encoded what came
off the CD.  It does sound pretty good compared with the original.

If anyone knows of any better MPEG audio encoders than l3enc that run
under Unix, please let me know.  I tried the 8hz-mp3 and Bladeenc
encoders, but these left unpleasant "ringing" artifacts in the MP3 file
(though less noticeable when the bitrate exceeded 128 Kbit/s).  I also
tried the Fraunhofer V3 MP3 encoder, but, although giving excellent
results, will only encode the first 30 seconds with the demo version.

Pointers to MPEG audio encoders for Digital Unix 4.0 are especially
welcome!!

BTW, please do not link WWW pages to this ftp site, since I don't want
to invite the attention of the RIAA and other non-BOC-L folks who might
be trolling via search engines.  You are welcome to copy the files and
put copies on your own sites, however.

Cheers,

Paul.

obCD: Hawkwind, _The 1999 Party_

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time"
        --- James Marshall Hendrix