The Tenuous Link

Mycroft Holmes is, or was (what is the correct tense for a fictional character?) Sherlock's older brother.

Mycroft is also the name of the search box in Firefox. You can press Control-K to move the cursor straight to it, and do a search for Mycroft to prove me right on both points.

When you've done that, visit mycroft.mozdev.org to see a huge list of extra search engines and resources that you can add to it. If you don't feel that you spend too much time at Wikipedia already, that is!

I've used AllOfMP3.com for a few weeks, and I've stuck to MP3s encoded using the Lame encoder. I've spent a lot of my free time playing with that in the past, and I think it does a good job. So here's what I've learned about AllOfMP3 ...

Although you can access all their files using a web browser, there is also a Windows application that you can use that makes the service easier to use. After you download and install the "Allofmp3 Explorer" application, you have to work out how to use it; after that, the service is very quick and convenient. Hint: There is *no* search item in any of the application menus, it is buried in the middle of the tree control on the left of the screen.

The quality of the tunes that I've downloaded have been quite good to excellent. One problem I think I've had is songs missing the last fraction of a second at the end or begining. That's ironic isn't it? Or maybe I downloaded some tunes off a mix album though, I'm not sure.

Another issue is the encoding. AllOfMp3 label all their songs as VIP, OE or OEEx. VIP is are available to download as MP3s at 192 kbps; songs marked OE (online encoding) allow you to chose which format and bitrate you would like the file encoded as; Files marked OEEx allow download in all of the formats, plus some lossless formats (so they will preserve the exact data that was encoded on the CD).

I mention the three types of download available because I grabbed some files at 160 kpbs average bit rate, and thought they sounded a little odd. Here are my guesses about what they have on their servers for each type of file:

VIP

This should be easy, 192 kbps MP3, right? But a help page for the OE files suggests that these might have been encoded with no bandpass filter, joint stereo off, and psycoacoustics off. That's all of the MP3 smarts that help the compressed music sound good switched off. I'm going to stay clear of these files.

OE (Online Encoding)

My guess is that OE files are stored on their server as 384 kbps MP3 files. Turning off the MP3 encoder psycoacoustics is possibly fine for this extremely high bitrate, but transcoding to another bit-rate or format can cause problems because you have made applied two compressions on the music. The second encoding can't distinguish between the original music, and the small artifacts introduced by the first compression, so can't do as good a job as it should.

OEEX (aka CD-DA quality)

Probably a losslessly compressed CD rip. There are no technical issues reencoding these.

If the tunes you want are marked OEEx or OE then use the Lame encoder "Preset standard" (or "standart" as it says in the UI): you'll get very good sound, but the files are big. This setting is the one that the Lame software developers think will be transparent to you. The bitrate is variable, some of the files I downloaded came in a smidge under 192 Mbs, some are over 200 Mbs. If file size is more important to you, or the file is only marked OE, chose a 128 kbps MP3. These have the psycoacoustics turned on, use joint stereo, and that bitrate is at the sweet spot for MP3. Hopefully the reencoding issues won't be a problem because of the more agressive filtering at 128 kbps. (Again, I've only downloaded Lame-encoded MP3s.)

If I was ripping my own CDs at home, I might be tempted to add the -Y option to --alt-preset standard. It uses a 16 kHz low-pass filter, which helps keep the bit rate down, and is probably the threshold of my ears anyway. That's not an option at AllOfMP3.com. Never mind, I'll just have to buy a bigger hard disk.