A Review of Audioactive's MP3 Production Studio
(Straight Outta Cleveland for the Darlings of Download)
[ No. 21 - July 1998 ]
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"If you don't like the music go out and make some of your own." -
apologies to Scoop Nisker.
The lovely, talented, entrenched and self-appointed power structure
currently controlling the delivery of music to retail and radio knows
the best defense is a good offense. Their crackdown (assisted by the
RIAA) of illegal free MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) based music sites is only one
example of a pointed and furious fusillade. Inefficient software
search engines, such as BMI's charmingly named "Musicbot," have been
commissioned by the tenacious Collection Socities. These "bots" cruise
the Web at the speed of a banana slug, seeking out audio files created
with known freeware MP3 encoders. The adorable beastbot then reports
back to its trainer with a list of files that match the search
parameters. Unfortunately, the results say nothing about the content
of the files or whether the audio file is legally owned by its
creator. It merely tells the trainer the name of the file and where
that file is. Imagine the absolutely huge number of MP3 encoded files
on the World Wide Web. Now cackle with glee, grateful you're not the
drudge sifting through data to identify who's bad and who's good. Your
dues at work! Let's do our part in shifting the balance from illegal
to legal in the bots' master list of MP3 files. How can you do that?
Let's try out a new, useful and fairly priced MP3 audio encoder.
Created by Big Brains at the privately-owned Telos company located in
the resurrecting-as-we-speak urban opportunity that is Cleveland, the
recently released Audioactive MP3 Production Studio (a software encoder)
is a simple and workable tool for preparing digital audio files to be
streamed and downloaded via the Internet.
The encoder is built on top of the expert Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
encoding algorithm. These are the same wacky German audio scientists
who (while glaring balefully over their small rectangular glasses and
pushing a lank lock of hair out of their eyes) were heard to intone:
"One-percent packet loss is unacceptable!" The Audioactive MP3 encoder
is at the top of a very short list of fully functional software
encoders that make use of this algorithm. Other encoding engines may
use lower quality algorithms, have slower processing time, a
less common-sense interface and more limited feature set, or (horrors!)
be illegal. You may experience some discomfort while using them. Do
not operate heavy machinery. See side of package for details.
You can try the Audioactive MP3 encoder for 30 days, free, by
downloading a copy from
<www.audioactive.com>.
That should be more than enough time to plaster every piece of
music in your CD collection to the server in your closet. Just
kidding! Despite our fingerpointing at the shortcomings of the
traditional music industry, The FezGuys believe that the best way
to effect change is through responsible application of the tools at
your disposal. As Mr. Mackey, the school counselor on South Park,
might tell you: "Kids... putting up audio files you don't own the
copyrights to for free distribution on the Internet is bad. So
don't be bad.... hmmkay?"
Here's how the little chunky-monkey works: The Audioactive MP3
Production Studio takes WAV files as input and converts them to MP3
files in a wide variety of bit and sample rates. You can batch-compress
many files at once. Files can be "drag-and-dropped" into the
application, or browsed-for and individually added from within the
app. Once adding a WAV file to the encoder, settings can individually
selected for the resulting MP3 file - a selection of bitrates ranging
from small (16kbps, 18kbps, 20kbps, 24kbps - which will stream in
realtime over modems) all the way up to the notsmall 128kbps (for the
fabled "near-CD" quality that justifies actually charging money for
musical downloads).
It's our experience that, at the afore-mentioned modem-streaming
bitrates, the best sound quality is achieved with sample rates of 16kHz
or higher. If you will use the lower bitrates; it's worthwhile
sticking to the mono setting thereby applying every spare bit available
to the sonic clarity of your music.
A default parameter setting is available and is easy to modify. This
makes it a simple task to preserve the quality settings you have
discovered after some initial time spent testing different combinations
of sample and bit rates. Speaking of which, there's also a "Preview"
option which allows for quick sampling of the sound quality for
different compression settings on 1-10 second portions of your WAV
file. It's particularly useful since you have the ability to select
where in your WAV file the preview starts. For those interested in the
size of compressed files at various bit and sample rates, the devoted
Audioactive folks have also included a simple little "Stream Size
Calculator" which allows you to set two variables and thereby compute a
third variable of your choice using data rate, length of clip and
size. That's a pretty useful feature. You ask: How did they come up
with that one? You know that tiny indicator on the dashboard that
tells you what kind of fuel mileage you're getting? Our guess is that
they kidnapped that engineer from the car factory down the street and
forced the poor deluded geek to twist megabytes instead of gas.
The Audioactive MP3 encoder works very well. It's reasonably fast
(about twice the processing speed of the common freeware encoders).
The bench-chained Fez-Testers found encoding time for a one-minute,
18kbps, MP3 file on a Pentium 90 machine (*not* a huge powerhorse of a
machine by today's standards) to be around one minute and twenty
seconds. A one-minute, 44.1kHz, 16bit file encoded to MP3 at 48kbps
and 24kHz took approximately two-minutes and thirty seconds. For those
of you with experience in this field you know that's pretty
respectable. You can batch-process a bunch of files, step away from
your machine and go watch the docu-drama about the Rise And Fall of
Milli Vanilli. When you're finished retching in sympathy for those
deluded dorks your files will be nicely wrapped up and ready to go.
Audioactive also includes a "Processing Priority" setting to control
how much computer power (CPU cycles) are being used, including a
setting to only run when it's idle, thereby allowing you to batch
encode a lot of sound files in a way which won't interfere with the
normal use of your computer. This MP3 encoder is based on a
well-respected and popular codec and, improbably enough, you can bug
Audioactive for support on technical queries. They are proud of their
little software darling and are eager to discuss improvements and field
suggestions.
The Audioactive MP3 Encoder is a Windows-only product for the
time-being. Overall, it's very good. The Lite version, at $59US, is
very competitively priced. The Pro version, at $369US, seems a "leedle
pricey" but, if the extra doodads and what they call "Higher Quality
encode" (for squeezing that extra *oomph* in "quality") improves your
sense of self-esteem, a few hundred dollars are certainly worth the
investment. Casual users publishing samples to the Internet will be
more than pleased with the Lite version. The FezGuys give the
Audioactive MP3 Software Encoder three and a half Fezzes out of a
possible four.
1 Fez - Pass
2 Fez - If there's nothing else
3 Fez - I'll take it
4 Fez - I'll kill you to get it
Fez y Fez - I have a question that I can't seem to get answered by
local geeks: I'm trying to download a sample video with music... It's
a 900K file and when I try to play it, the message says it is an AVI
file and I need an AVI to QT converter and it says I ain't got it. I'm
running a Mac Powerbook 1400c with System 8 and all that came with that
system. Any idea what I need to play this thing, and where to get
it?? Thanks. The Fez is with me. - Bob Mithoff
Dear Bob,
This is not an uncommon predicament among MPEG users of the
world! MPEG standards cover not only a number of different types and
versions (Layer 1-3, MPEG 1, 2, etc), but they also include audio-only,
video-only, and audio and video together. Since is no standard single
application that can handle playback of *all* of the possibilities
(though QuickTime is coming close), you need to stockpile your computer
with players for each commonly used type. Here's how to make an
intelligent guess on whether the file you are downloading is MPEG audio
or video: if it ends in .mp2, .mp2a, .mp3, or .m3u, it is an audio
file, if it ends in .mpg, it's likely to be a video and audio MPEG
file. You should be able to view video MPEG files with the latest
version of QuickTime. For the Mac, you can also search the Internet for
"Sparkle" (if you have problems with QuickTime's Movie Player
application.) There's still a lot of confusion stemming from users
unfamiliarity with correct file extensions. In your particular case, it
sounds like you have come across an AVI file (commonly named
"file.avi"), which is a Windows video format. Quicktime 3.0 claims to
be able to play AVI files, so if you don't have 3.0, take a stop over
at for a free upgrade! -- The FezGuys
