Here are other recommended tools for MP3 in OS/2 I tried before releasing
this beta of pm123.

MP3 Encoders
============

I have tested four encoders, and each of them gave very good results,
except MP3Enc.  I wasn't able to hear the difference with my $40 headphones
between the encoded 128kb/s stereo (not joint-stereo) MP3s and their
original WAVs (yes, even Classical Music).

ToMPG 3.0 for Win32 (http://www.kiss.uni-lj.si/~k4fe0470/tompg.zip)
-------------------

This is a Win32 console EXE, but it converts NUMBER ONE with Win32-OS/2
Alpha 0.02!! (http://www.os2ss.com/win32-os2)

ToMPG is fast.  I mean astoundingly fast, light speed fast. WARNING!! it's
going to blow your socks off!!  It's seven (7) times faster (no joke) than
L3Enc 1.0 for OS/2 here.

Use the following options though.  The default values aren't terrific.
-B64 -M0

This program presumably looks free.  I see it on many unofficial sites,
that means excluding Xing's, and it never comes with any license or
shareware restrictions.  It seems to be the predecessor of the commercial
Win32 GUI Xing encoder (http://www.xingtech.com).

L3Enc 1.0 for OS/2  (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/mmedia/sound/convert/l3en4os2.zip)
------------------

This is actually the well known L3Enc from Fraunhofer-IIS version 1.0.  It
looks like they used EMX to compile this version of L3Enc for DOS, and it
had the side effect to make it also run in OS/2.  Somebody, somewhere, had
that old copy and made it reappear in public.  The new versions of L3Enc
now use DJGPP and that doesn't make any OS/2 binaries.  Send shit to
Fraunhofer-IIS!!

It's reasonably fast, but it hogs the CPU. You should get SPE
(http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/system/spe.zip) to reduce its priority
to idle 0 if you want to do something else when it's encoding.

L3Enc 2.72 for DOS   (ftp://www.iis.fhg.de/pub/layer3/l3v272d1.zip)
------------------

This one is so forsaken demoralizingly slow.  Especially with the bogus -hq
option (is it just eating CPU cycles for the fun of it or what?).  But this
is the last (and obsolete) official version with all sorts of options to
make lower frequency MPEG streams for example.

This requires a registration for encoding over 112kb/s.  huhuhu... yah
right.

MP3Enc 3.0 for Win32 (http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/mp3enc/)
--------------------

This is a new face of L3Enc.  It has a Win32 EXE, but no DOS EXE.  However,
it also converts fine with Win32-OS/2.  Nonetheless, I was very disapointed
by its performance. The sound is muffled (especially with the highest
quality, weird) compared with any of the previous encoders.  Moreover, it
is not even faster than L3Enc 1.0.  But some, God knows why, only swears by
it.

You should get SP to reduce its priority as it hogs the CPU.
(http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/system/sp103.zip)

This requires a registration for more than 30 seconds of MP3 encoding.
huhuhu... yah right.

os2enc01.zip
------------

I didn't get it to work at all.  Gives garbage.

AMPEG 4.3 (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/mmedia/sound/convert/ampeg43.zip)
---------

Good package to encode mp2 files, but they need to be much larger than mp3
to achieve the same quality.  I can hear the difference with my headphones.


Decoders
========

mpg123 for OS/2 0.20 (http://www.cam.org/~guardia/archives/mpg123_020.zip)
--------------------

This is my port of mpg123 (which I used to make mpg123.dll).  I included a
WAV routine to include a RIFF WAVE header output mode.  So basically,
anything that pm123 or mpg123 can play can be dumped to WAV files that can
then be used for editing, CD burning or reencoding with ToMPG.


CD-DA utilities
===============

Leech 1.20 (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/mmedia/sound/editors/leech120.zip)
----------

This is a CD grabber with dijittering capabilities. There is a very good
reason that you want to prevent any jittering.  Not only does it insert
clicks in your PCM sample, it can also switch the left and right channel!!

Nonetheless, I get loads of "jitter correction failed" even though Alfons,
for example, has no problem reading it.  Must be my Goldstar CD-ROM drive
that doesn't like to jump all over the place to correct jittering.  I heard
Panasonic CD-ROM drive do 0 jitter all the way, now that's neat.  Anyway,
if your CD-ROM drive hates CD-DA like mine, try to use -s10 and -j100.  It
might be slow, but at least you get everything.

Make sure you use the options to dump the audio track into a RAW file if
you intend to encode it with L3Enc.  If you don't do so, L3Enc will encode
the WAV header (it doesn't recognize it), and you will get a click at the
beginning of your MP3 files.

Alfons 0.96 (ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/sound/alf096b.zip)
-----------

This is the best CD-DA utility after Leech.  It's very easy to use, and
because Leech can take quite a while reading a track on my CD-ROM drive, I
use Alfons for "quick and dirty grabs".


Front Ends
==========

MP3 PM 0.54 (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/mmedia/sound/convert/mp3pm053.zip)
-----------

Looks like a promising control interface for L3Enc, ToMPG, Leech, and
Alfons, but it is pretty useless at the moment without CD-DA utility
support.

CD2MP3 1.04 (http://www.cam.org/~guardia/archives/cd2mp3104.zip)
-----------

This is a utility I also programmed that uses ToMPG (or MP3Enc) and Leech
to easily grab portions of a CD to MP3s.  It reportebly works very well, so
try it out. :)


Samuel Audet <guardia@cam.org>
