{"id":40,"date":"2006-03-22T15:54:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-22T22:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/?p=40"},"modified":"2006-03-22T15:54:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-22T22:54:00","slug":"open-source-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/?p=40","title":{"rendered":"Open Source Alternatives?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three audio formats<\/a> — WAV<\/a>,  MP3<\/a>, and CD-Audio<\/a> — represent the current standard in sound these days.  Just about everyone is familiar with them by now, thanks to CD burners and portable MP3 players.  The MP3 file format has been a real boon for voice work too.  Nowadays a voice actor can do most of his\/her work at home, compress the results to MP3, and e-mail the file wherever it has to go.  <\/p>\n

There are negatives to MP3 format, of course.  It’s a lossy format, which means you lose information.  To make a sound file smaller, it leaves stuff out.  It’s like filling up a suitcase.  You can’t take everything with you, so you take the stuff<\/a> you know you’re gonna need<\/a> and leave the rest behind.  If you want the audio format equivalent of a Space Bag<\/a>, you have to try something else.  <\/p>\n

MP3 is also a proprietary format.  Technically it belongs to somebody else.  Some cyberspace cowboys<\/a> don’t like that.  They want information to be free (or at least hassle-free), accessible to everyone.  That desire set off the open source<\/a> movement.<\/p>\n

Okay, so why am I bringing all this up?  Well, other than the way working in audiodrama makes all this stuff disturbingly important, I stumbled on something that might be handy to folks who want to use their MP3 players without getting pushed around by the Man.  It’s called Rockbox<\/a>.   However it’s a geeky, hacker-ish alternative.  I haven’t tried it either, so I can’t vouch for it.  <\/p>\n

I’d love to hear from anyone who tries it out.  Post a comment on this posting or e-mail.  Rockbox looks like an interesting experiment and I’d like to follow its progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three audio formats — WAV,  MP3, and CD-Audio — represent the current standard in sound these days.  Just about everyone is familiar with them by now, thanks to CD burners and portable MP3 players.  The MP3 file format has been a real boon for voice work too.  Nowadays a voice actor can do most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}