Hi, Fred or Cowboy can correct me if I'm incorrect, but just to comment, for several years now with Rivendell MP2 for the library storage and playback has been available in software with any sound card. This change was made when the patent expired. For those with ASI cards the encoding / decoding can be done on the hardware, but with modern systems this isn't much of an issue - current systems have more then enough processing power to encode / decode MP2 in software without difficulty.
MP3 has been discussed several times on this list serve, there was even back in the early days an unofficial patch you could apply to the source to allow you to use mp3 as the storage format for your library. You could make your station sound like an MP3 on the air, including digital MP3 artifacts and all! Perfect for the ipod generation. Aside from the legal issues which have been mentioned, the other part of the discussion was that MP3 was never designed to be a compression algorithm to be used in broadcast applications. Often when mp3's are played through the rest of a broadcast audio chain they come out the other end sounding like mush. MP2 on the other hand has been used in broadcast applications since the mid 90's and actually survives a broadcast chain relatively well. Rivendell can import and export MP3's, converting them to the storage format you've selected for your library. But for the actual storage format of the library you're limited to linear and/or MP2. These days the real benefit of ASI cards is the time scaling and balanced IO, plus of course they sound good. Lorne Tyndale _______________________________________________ Rivendell-dev mailing list Rivendell-dev@lists.rivendellaudio.org http://caspian.paravelsystems.com/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev
