mp3-encoder device

[almo]

What are you trying to achieve with this mp3 encoder? Do you want to
go from some other media, CD, or wma, aiff, etc., to plain mp3? If
so, you can do that right on your PC for free (well...), but you can
only do it real time, i.e., play the song into the line-in of the
sound card, then save it as an mp3. It won't to a batch conversion,
but it'll convert any music source into digital, and save it in any
format, depending on your software. You can use Wavepad. And the
Sound Blaster card, and probably all of the others, samples at 48Khz,
which is higher then CD quality, so your mp3 ends up almost lossless,
except that mp3 is a lossy compression algorithm, however you can
specify the bit rate for the amount of compression.

And don't worry about the mp3 patent. That's owned by Napster, and
it's only used to protect their music (DRM.) So, unless you're going
into business to rip their music library, then screw Napster.
Actually, it was Napster that made me figure a way to get songs off of
an old mp3 player without having to buy a new subscription to thtm,
because I was using Napster a couple years ago. I didn't want to have
to pay them again for stuff I already paid for.

I got ahead of myself. Wavepad won't handle it, but there's a way.
I'll check into it and post it.

(Note: if this message is repeated, then there's a problem with
google groups. There's no way I could have made a mistake.
Otherwise, disregard the parenthetical notation.)

 

[Henry Kiefer]

| > Do you know the patent number or expiration date?
| >
| > Other codecs more useful?
| >
| It's recent enough that nobody should be thinking about what happens
| after the patent expires. Poke around here http://www.mp3licensing.com

I don't understand the meaning.
If I use the patent entirely for private, it is free!
If the patent expires, it is useable (commercially) by everyone.

|
| OGG is supposed to be a free alternative, though of course the problem
| is that it's not compatible with MP3s, so if you don't get or put
| something into OGG format in the first place, you'll have to convert
| from MP3s if that's the distribution method, and suffere the losses.
|
| Some simple searches in obvious places would find useful information.

I don't want to distribute mp3-files. The file would be generated locally by the user of the hardware I plan.

Is ogg a standard every pc can play?
Is the ogg algorithm complicated?
Is a ready-to-use codec with integrated ogg compress/decompress somewhere available?

regards -
Henry

 

[Henry Kiefer]

| > What are you trying to achieve with this mp3 encoder? Do you want to
| > go from some other media, CD, or wma, aiff, etc., to plain mp3? If
| > so, you can do that right on your PC for free (well...), but you can
| > only do it real time, i.e., play the song into the line-in of the
| > sound card, then save it as an mp3. It won't to a batch conversion,
| > but it'll convert any music source into digital, and save it in any
| > format, depending on your software. You can use Wavepad. And the
| > Sound Blaster card, and probably all of the others, samples at 48Khz,
| > which is higher then CD quality, so your mp3 ends up almost lossless,
| > except that mp3 is a lossy compression algorithm, however you can
| > specify the bit rate for the amount of compression.
| >
| > And don't worry about the mp3 patent. That's owned by Napster, and
| > it's only used to protect their music (DRM.) So, unless you're going
| > into business to rip their music library, then screw Napster.
| > Actually, it was Napster that made me figure a way to get songs off of
| > an old mp3 player without having to buy a new subscription to thtm,
| > because I was using Napster a couple years ago. I didn't want to have
| > to pay them again for stuff I already paid for.
|
| I got ahead of myself. Wavepad won't handle it, but there's a way.
| I'll check into it and post it.
|
| (Note: if this message is repeated, then there's a problem with
| google groups. There's no way I could have made a mistake.
| Otherwise, disregard the parenthetical notation.)

Hm. Seems the wrong direction...

I want to use it for the design of an automatic answering machine.
And to be useful as an "component" for electronics design it should be scalable and a standard - so it is workable with a simple pc.
There is no *must* for mp3. I don't need a copyright scheme, nor high-quality. At the moment mono telephone-quality is enough.

- Henry

 

[[email protected]]

| > What are you trying to achieve with this mp3 encoder? Do you want to
| > go from some other media, CD, or wma, aiff, etc., to plain mp3? If
| > so, you can do that right on your PC for free (well...), but you can
| > only do it real time, i.e., play the song into the line-in of the
| > sound card, then save it as an mp3. It won't to a batch conversion,
| > but it'll convert any music source into digital, and save it in any
| > format, depending on your software. You can use Wavepad. And the
| > Sound Blaster card, and probably all of the others, samples at 48Khz,
| > which is higher then CD quality, so your mp3 ends up almost lossless,
| > except that mp3 is a lossy compression algorithm, however you can
| > specify the bit rate for the amount of compression.
| >
| > And don't worry about the mp3 patent. That's owned by Napster, and
| > it's only used to protect their music (DRM.) So, unless you're going
| > into business to rip their music library, then screw Napster.
| > Actually, it was Napster that made me figure a way to get songs off of
| > an old mp3 player without having to buy a new subscription to thtm,
| > because I was using Napster a couple years ago. I didn't want to have
| > to pay them again for stuff I already paid for.
|
| I got ahead of myself. Wavepad won't handle it, but there's a way.
| I'll check into it and post it.
|
| (Note: if this message is repeated, then there's a problem with
| google groups. There's no way I could have made a mistake.
| Otherwise, disregard the parenthetical notation.)

Hm. Seems the wrong direction...

I want to use it for the design of an automatic answering machine.
And to be useful as an "component" for electronics design it should be scalable and a standard - so it is workable with a simple pc.

Then Ogg-Vorbis is for you.

http://www.vorbis.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis

Michael

 

[Jan Panteltje]

| > Hi all -
| >
| > Does someone know of a small mp3-encoder chip incl. decoding?
| >
| > I cannot believe there is nothing. Why cannot MAXIM make one
| > - would be the first interesting device of them ;-)
|
| Real-time MP3 encoding need something like a 200MHz pentium,
| but worse than that there's a patent on MP3.

Do you know the patent number or expiration date?

Other codecs more useful?

- Henry

Eh, you could buy one of these, and see how they do it:
http://www.trekstor-fileserver.de/trekstor-pdfs/pdf_web/ibeat_organix_fm_en.pdf
Go one up too:
http://www.trekstore.de/en/products/detail_mp3.php?pid=19&cat=0

They say (the pdf) it records in mp3, but I do not have one.
25 hours on a charge, oled display, whatdoyouknow, nice

 

[[email protected]]

"almo" <[email protected]> schrieb

I want to use it for the design of an automatic answering machine.
And to be useful as an "component" for electronics design it should be scalable and a standard - so it is workable with a simple pc.
There is no *must* for mp3. I don't need a copyright scheme, nor high-quality. At the >moment mono telephone-quality is enough.

There are several free solutions for this available for teh Linux OS.
I personally record phone like this:

# save mixer1 current state
cmix /dev/mixer1 save /root/this1

# set mixer1 levels
cmix /dev/mixer1 vol 50
cmix /dev/mixer1 line1 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 mic 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 pcm 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 cd 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 speaker 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 phin 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 phout 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 video 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 rcs line on
cmix /dev/mixer1 igain 64
cmix /dev/mixer1 line 50

# record to mp3, ctrl C exits
rec -d /dev/dsp1 -r 44100 -c 2 -s w -t raw - | lame -r -s 44.1 -m s -x
- line.mp3

# restore mixer1 original settings
cmix /dev/mixer1 load /root/this1

 

[[email protected]]

There are several free solutions for this available for teh Linux OS.
I personally record phone like this:

# save mixer1 current state
cmix /dev/mixer1 save /root/this1

# set mixer1 levels
cmix /dev/mixer1 vol 50
cmix /dev/mixer1 line1 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 mic 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 pcm 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 cd 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 speaker 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 phin 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 phout 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 video 0
cmix /dev/mixer1 rcs line on
cmix /dev/mixer1 igain 64
cmix /dev/mixer1 line 50

# record to mp3, ctrl C exits
rec -d /dev/dsp1 -r 44100 -c 2 -s w -t raw - | lame -r -s 44.1 -m s -x
- line.mp3

# restore mixer1 original settings
cmix /dev/mixer1 load /root/this1

Wow, neat... but the operator has to be present to run the script,
right?

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Wow, neat... but the operator has to be present to run the script,
right?

Na, I wrote a voice level activated application too:
http://panteltje.com/panteltje/cb/xpvox-0.9.2.tgz

Command:
xpvox -o | lame -r -s 44100 -m m -x - out.mp3

screenshot:
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/xpvox.gif

But this is more for other purposes, there are several real phone
answering packages for Linux, some probably using a normal 'voicemodem'.
I have the voicemodem on one line input of one mixer.

 

[Henry Kiefer]

| Eh, you could buy one of these, and see how they do it:
| http://www.trekstor-fileserver.de/trekstor-pdfs/pdf_web/ibeat_organix_fm_en.pdf
| Go one up too:
| http://www.trekstore.de/en/products/detail_mp3.php?pid=19&cat=0
|
| They say (the pdf) it records in mp3, but I do not have one.
| 25 hours on a charge, oled display, whatdoyouknow, nice

Thanks for your effort. But I see problems converting it into a com device.

regards -
Henry

 

[Henry Kiefer]

|
| > I want to use it for the design of an automatic answering machine.
| > And to be useful as an "component" for electronics design it should be scalable and a standard - so it is workable with a simple
pc.
| > There is no *must* for mp3. I don't need a copyright scheme, nor high-quality. At the >moment mono telephone-quality is enough.
|
| There are several free solutions for this available for teh Linux OS.
| I personally record phone like this:

Nice. I will see if I can fit Linux in a small 28-pin device.

regards -
Henry

 

[Jan Panteltje]

|
| > I want to use it for the design of an automatic answering machine.
| > And to be useful as an "component" for electronics design it should be scalable and a standard - so it is workable with a
simple
pc.
| > There is no *must* for mp3. I don't need a copyright scheme, nor high-quality. At the >moment mono telephone-quality is
enough.
|
| There are several free solutions for this available for teh Linux OS.
| I personally record phone like this:

Nice. I will see if I can fit Linux in a small 28-pin device.

I have lost you here, you mention (see above) 'workable with a PC'.
If you have the PC and a voice modem (either external or internal)
why bother with something else?

 

[almo]

| > What are you trying to achieve with this mp3 encoder? Do you want to

|> | > go from some other media, CD, or wma, aiff, etc., to plain
mp3? If

| > so, you can do that right on your PC for free (well...), but you can
| > only do it real time, i.e., play the song into the line-in of the
| > sound card, then save it as an mp3. It won't to a batch conversion,
| > but it'll convert any music source into digital, and save it in any
| > format, depending on your software. You can use Wavepad. And the
| > Sound Blaster card, and probably all of the others, samples at 48Khz,
| > which is higher then CD quality, so your mp3 ends up almost lossless,
| > except that mp3 is a lossy compression algorithm, however you can
| > specify the bit rate for the amount of compression.
| >
| > And don't worry about the mp3 patent. That's owned by Napster, and
| > it's only used to protect their music (DRM.) So, unless you're going
| > into business to rip their music library, then screw Napster.
| > Actually, it was Napster that made me figure a way to get songs off of
| > an old mp3 player without having to buy a new subscription to thtm,
| > because I was using Napster a couple years ago. I didn't want to have
| > to pay them again for stuff I already paid for.
|
| I got ahead of myself. Wavepad won't handle it, but there's a way.
| I'll check into it and post it.
|
| (Note: if this message is repeated, then there's a problem with
| google groups. There's no way I could have made a mistake.
| Otherwise, disregard the parenthetical notation.)

Hm. Seems the wrong direction...

I want to use it for the design of an automatic answering machine.
And to be useful as an "component" for electronics design it should be scalable and a standard - so it is workable with a simple pc.
There is no *must* for mp3. I don't need a copyright scheme, nor high-quality. At the moment mono telephone-quality is enough.

- Henry

--www.ehydra.dyndns.info

If you're just doing mono telephone quality, then you can just use a
PIC chip like a 12F675 which has a 10-bit A/D, or any of their chips
with A/D, but the 675 is dirt cheap and is only a 8-pin DIP. And for
telephone quality you really only need 8-bits because the voice
bandwidth is 3 Khz, but 8 bits is easier to work with. And then you'd
sample at about 6.5 Khz, and store the data in a separate flash memory
chip, and you could store plenty of messages in cheap flash memory.

And presto, that's already a wave file. Except you have to add a
header to make it a .wav file, and maybe break it into chunks, and you
can look up the wave formatting on Google, but basically there's 2
chunks required, a Format Chunk and a Data Chunk, and that's enough
for any PC to play it, or do anything with it. It looks like this:

RIFF WAVE Chunk--
groupID = 'RIFF
riffType = 'WAVE'

Format Chunk
ckID = 'fmt '
Sound Data Chunk
ckID = 'data'

And there might be a PIC chip or some other chip with a D/A. I think
I saw one somewhere, but I forget. Check PIC Micro, and Atmel,etc.
But a D/A chip is easy to hook up.

Hope that helps.

 

[Henry Kiefer]

| >Nice. I will see if I can fit Linux in a small 28-pin device.
|
| I have lost you here, you mention (see above) 'workable with a PC'.
| If you have the PC and a voice modem (either external or internal)
| why bother with something else?

The PC is for reading the voice tracks once it is on. The planned hardware is always powered up. It's a small module.

- Henry

 

[Henry Kiefer]

| If you're just doing mono telephone quality, then you can just use a
| PIC chip like a 12F675 which has a 10-bit A/D, or any of their chips
| with A/D, but the 675 is dirt cheap and is only a 8-pin DIP. And for
| telephone quality you really only need 8-bits because the voice
| bandwidth is 3 Khz, but 8 bits is easier to work with. And then you'd
| sample at about 6.5 Khz, and store the data in a separate flash memory
| chip, and you could store plenty of messages in cheap flash memory.
|
| And presto, that's already a wave file. Except you have to add a
| header to make it a .wav file, and maybe break it into chunks, and you
| can look up the wave formatting on Google, but basically there's 2
| chunks required, a Format Chunk and a Data Chunk, and that's enough
| for any PC to play it, or do anything with it. It looks like this:
|
| RIFF WAVE Chunk--
| groupID = 'RIFF
| riffType = 'WAVE'
|
| Format Chunk
| ckID = 'fmt '
| Sound Data Chunk
| ckID = 'data'
|
| And there might be a PIC chip or some other chip with a D/A. I think
| I saw one somewhere, but I forget. Check PIC Micro, and Atmel,etc.
| But a D/A chip is easy to hook up.

Yes. Thanks for youre detailed info.

- Henry

 

[Henry Kiefer]

| Then Ogg-Vorbis is for you.
|
| http://www.vorbis.com/
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis

It needs a floating-point unit. Pretty useless for low-end microcontroller.

- Henry

 

[jasen]

| > Hi all -
| >
| > Does someone know of a small mp3-encoder chip incl. decoding?
| >
| > I cannot believe there is nothing. Why cannot MAXIM make one
| > - would be the first interesting device of them ;-)
|
| Real-time MP3 encoding need something like a 200MHz pentium,
| but worse than that there's a patent on MP3.

Do you know the patent number or expiration date?

no, in any case
the date is somewhat regionally variable.

Other codecs more useful?

not which you want.

free ones:

ogg-vorbis

flac

pay ones:

wma


Bye.
Jasen

 

[joseph2k]

It's recent enough that nobody should be thinking about what happens
after the patent expires. Poke around here http://www.mp3licensing.com

OGG is supposed to be a free alternative, though of course the problem
is that it's not compatible with MP3s, so if you don't get or put
something into OGG format in the first place, you'll have to convert
from MP3s if that's the distribution method, and suffere the losses.

Some simple searches in obvious places would find useful information.

Michael

I looked pretty good, many to most of the patents are from 1986 to 1992. In
most of the industrial world a patent runs for 20 years from date of
application, thus these core patants will be dropping like flies for the
next 5 years. In the US it is 17 years from the date of grant which is
usually 3 to 4 years later, same situation.

 

[joseph2k]

| > Do you know the patent number or expiration date?
| >
| > Other codecs more useful?
| >
| It's recent enough that nobody should be thinking about what happens
| after the patent expires. Poke around here http://www.mp3licensing.com

I don't understand the meaning.
If I use the patent entirely for private, it is free!
If the patent expires, it is useable (commercially) by everyone.

|
| OGG is supposed to be a free alternative, though of course the problem
| is that it's not compatible with MP3s, so if you don't get or put
| something into OGG format in the first place, you'll have to convert
| from MP3s if that's the distribution method, and suffere the losses.
|
| Some simple searches in obvious places would find useful information.

I don't want to distribute mp3-files. The file would be generated locally
by the user of the hardware I plan.

Is ogg a standard every pc can play?

Yes, it is FOSS. Almost any PC can play it and the software is free. There
are even few tiny mp3 players that can play ogg.

Is the ogg algorithm complicated?

Get the source and judge for yourself, it is free also.

Is a ready-to-use codec with integrated ogg compress/decompress somewhere
available?

In the sense of being included in readily available (and free) software,
yes. If you had to make a plug-in component for some undocumented player
software, you are on our own.

 

[joseph2k]

| > What are you trying to achieve with this mp3 encoder? Do you want to
| > go from some other media, CD, or wma, aiff, etc., to plain mp3? If
| > so, you can do that right on your PC for free (well...), but you can
| > only do it real time, i.e., play the song into the line-in of the
| > sound card, then save it as an mp3. It won't to a batch conversion,
| > but it'll convert any music source into digital, and save it in any
| > format, depending on your software. You can use Wavepad. And the
| > Sound Blaster card, and probably all of the others, samples at 48Khz,
| > which is higher then CD quality, so your mp3 ends up almost lossless,
| > except that mp3 is a lossy compression algorithm, however you can
| > specify the bit rate for the amount of compression.
| >
| > And don't worry about the mp3 patent. That's owned by Napster, and
| > it's only used to protect their music (DRM.) So, unless you're going
| > into business to rip their music library, then screw Napster.
| > Actually, it was Napster that made me figure a way to get songs off of
| > an old mp3 player without having to buy a new subscription to thtm,
| > because I was using Napster a couple years ago. I didn't want to have
| > to pay them again for stuff I already paid for.
|
| I got ahead of myself. Wavepad won't handle it, but there's a way.
| I'll check into it and post it.
|
| (Note: if this message is repeated, then there's a problem with
| google groups. There's no way I could have made a mistake.
| Otherwise, disregard the parenthetical notation.)

Hm. Seems the wrong direction...

I want to use it for the design of an automatic answering machine.
And to be useful as an "component" for electronics design it should be
scalable and a standard - so it is workable with a simple pc. There is no
*must* for mp3. I don't need a copyright scheme, nor high-quality. At the
moment mono telephone-quality is enough.

- Henry

Oh. OK. sounds like what you want is the CVSD from a digital telephone
style Subscriber-Line-Interface-Circuit (SLIC). Good telephone quality,
56 kbits/s and inexpensive. Most of the patents are from the 1960's though
1980's and all expired.

 

[joseph2k]

| >Nice. I will see if I can fit Linux in a small 28-pin device.
|
| I have lost you here, you mention (see above) 'workable with a PC'.
| If you have the PC and a voice modem (either external or internal)
| why bother with something else?

The PC is for reading the voice tracks once it is on. The planned hardware
is always powered up. It's a small module.

- Henry

OK. Power up the PC and collect your voice mail.