On Thu, 29 Nov 2001 11:16:24 -0800 (PST) Michelle Wagner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On a side note, does anyone have any opinions on > the best MP3 applications to use with Red Hat? What specifically are you looking for? Players or encoders? Unlike Windows, Linux and most of the UNIX world doesnt go for one-program-does-everything mega-apps - preferring focused tools, often of the command line app + GUI frontend variety. I dont collect mp3's myself (it's Downloading Communism, you know)...but I have tried many of the players and even a few encoders. The only mp3 player I have on my system right now is mpg123 - the canonical command line player (there are others, such as l3dec, splay, mpg321) but most player apps use mpg123 source, or call it directly. XMMS is popular. It's a graphic player that plays mp3's (it integrates the mpg123 player), and since it uses plug-ins, it can handle many other formats: Ogg Vorbis, .WAV, MIDI (using Timidity), tracker formats (MOD/S3M/XM/IT using Mikmod), even WMA (using Avifile). XMMS is skinnable (has it's own skins, plus it can use WinAMP 2.x compatible skins), has sound effect plugins (reverb, echo, etc.), and all the VU meter eye-candy you could want. There's also FreeAMP, a command line player with a GUI frontend. I believe I saw on slashdot a few months back that there is now a WinAMP for Linux, but it's not as good as XMMS, and it's binary-only. To be honest, there are mp3 frontends/players for every desktop environment and widget set available for Linux and the BSDs. A good alternative to XMMS, which has lots of dependencies and eats up too many CPU cycles and too much memory on lower-end machines, is a combination of mpg123 and GQmpeg. GQmpeg is a lightweight GTK-based frontend for mpg123. It's also skinnable, but the default appearance is good enough. - As far as encoders go, the two most popular for Linux are LAME and BladeEnc. Both are command line, with several graphical frontends available. There's some debate as to which encoder sounds better. There are also programs/frontends for ripping CD tracks, converting those tracks to mp3 or whatever format, and burning them onto other CDs. - I havent really said anything about RedHat, but I dont use it since I prefer to build everything from source -- but i'm sure there are appropriate RPMs for everything I've mentioned. (check Freshmeat.net or RPMfind.net) -- Mark Orr [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================ BRLUG - The Baton Rouge Linux User Group Visit http://www.brlug.net for more information. Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to change your subscription information. ================================================
