Library Cataloging
Memory institutions often have collections of non-commercial sound recordings. Oral history projects, meetings and presentations, and local music are some examples. Transferring these from tape to digital will provide better access, they may even be placed on the Web in digital format. However, MP3 and WMA are both proprietary lossey formats; some other codecs should be considered.For lossless open-source compression FLAC should be considered.
- Opml
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is interesting. There are better formats out there to do the same thing, XOXO (Extensible Open XHTML Outlines) for example. However, it works well with RSS, and seems to have become the most widespread of the formats....
- Audio Files
Yahoo now has an audio search. It provides a separate result pages for music podcasts and other. Missing MP3 tags make the results less useful.Since I picked on OCLC just now, I should mention they do have a good collection of talks available, their Distinguished...
- Preservation
The proceedings of the recent conference on Practical Experiences in Digital Preservation, from 2-4 April 2003 in Kew (United Kingdom), are now available online. There are PowerPoint for most presentations; a few are in pdf format. However, the exciting...
- Audio Books
Webwords, a U.K. project, is adding a link in audio book records to a short MP3 file. This allows the user to hear if the presentation is to their liking.The webwords project aims to enrich the quality of the experience of choosing an audio book. The...
- Sound Card
Here is a free tool to test your sound card. The RightMark Audio Analyzer 4.0 tests the audio performance of your sound card. Frequency response, THD, dynamic range, noise level, stereo crosstalk tests....
Library Cataloging
Audio Standards
Memory institutions often have collections of non-commercial sound recordings. Oral history projects, meetings and presentations, and local music are some examples. Transferring these from tape to digital will provide better access, they may even be placed on the Web in digital format. However, MP3 and WMA are both proprietary lossey formats; some other codecs should be considered.For lossless open-source compression FLAC should be considered.
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see links to the right for supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.A lossey open-source codec is Ogg Vorbis.
Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.
- Opml
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is interesting. There are better formats out there to do the same thing, XOXO (Extensible Open XHTML Outlines) for example. However, it works well with RSS, and seems to have become the most widespread of the formats....
- Audio Files
Yahoo now has an audio search. It provides a separate result pages for music podcasts and other. Missing MP3 tags make the results less useful.Since I picked on OCLC just now, I should mention they do have a good collection of talks available, their Distinguished...
- Preservation
The proceedings of the recent conference on Practical Experiences in Digital Preservation, from 2-4 April 2003 in Kew (United Kingdom), are now available online. There are PowerPoint for most presentations; a few are in pdf format. However, the exciting...
- Audio Books
Webwords, a U.K. project, is adding a link in audio book records to a short MP3 file. This allows the user to hear if the presentation is to their liking.The webwords project aims to enrich the quality of the experience of choosing an audio book. The...
- Sound Card
Here is a free tool to test your sound card. The RightMark Audio Analyzer 4.0 tests the audio performance of your sound card. Frequency response, THD, dynamic range, noise level, stereo crosstalk tests....