CAL -> .MP3?

Get set! . . . For more technobabble than you’ve heard since Capt. Janeway left the airwaves.

Here’s the deal:

Though there have been brief discussions of the subject before before, as of yesterday making Catholic Answers Live available in .mp3 format is under active exploration.

So is podcasting it.

So is tagging the show with questions, as we’ve been doing via the volunteer program.

One of the first things we’ve got to settle is what level of compression we’ll use in .mp3 format. Since this is a talk show rather than a music show, we can get away with a fairly high level of compression and thus make the shows easier to download, easier to fit more of them on your listening device, etc.

But there’s a problem: Each show is an hour long, and that’s a lot of time, so even at moderate compression ratios, the show might end up taking up a lot of space (e.g., 20 mb). If we go smaller than that (which we can do) then we risk causing a problem with the user’s ability to reverse-engineer ordinary CDs (which use the .wav format) out of the .mp3s.

This means: You couldn’t take the .mp3 and turn it into an ordinary CD and plop it into an ordinary CD player and have it work. (You could, however, burn it to a CD and then put the CD into an .mp3-equipt CD player, like the one I recently had put in my pickup.)

The question is: How many people really want to be able to reverse-engineer ordinary CDs out of the show versus how many want to use it in .mp3 format?

Also: How many want us to retain the RealAudio format versus how many would be willing to switch over to .mp3?

One final question: For transitioning our library of past shows, does anybody have recommendations of programs that would allow us to easily batch-convert our current .ra/.rm and .wav files to .mp3?

(I’m asking these questions here because the radio manager knew I had people on the blog talking about these issues and wanted to get a better sense of what folks wanted, so a little market research was in order.)

Thanks much, folks!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

39 thoughts on “CAL -> .MP3?”

  1. MP3 would be great. Currently, I have to convert it anyway, so this would save a big step. In my case, quality wouldn’t matter, as I don’t do the CD conversion.

    Great idea!

  2. While you’re at it, have you considered marketing the shows through Audible.com? They have a subscription service. I don’t know whether their format is MP3 or proprietary, though I suspect the latter.

    I buy a lot of content through Audible, but like many mass-market “bookstores”, their Catholic content is VERY small….

  4. MP3 is the way to go. I don’t see mp3 users cutting a CD. Since I started using an MP3 player, my CD player has been rarely used, especially for talk/voice material.

    I do cut a CD to store my mp3s off-line but not to convert to WAV. Also many of the newer CD players can read and play mp3.

    The Audible recommendation might be good for the other material. They do have a subscription service for radio shows, though I don’t think there’d be enough call for Catholic Answers. (Audible uses MP3 but wraps some encryption around it so that copyrights are protected.)

    The question is: How many people really want to be able to reverse-engineer ordinary CDs out of the show versus how many want to use it in .mp3 format? == Don’t think many if any.

    Also: How many want us to retain the RealAudio format versus how many would be willing to switch over to .mp3? Mp3 for sure.

    One final question: For transitioning our library of past shows, does anybody have recommendations of programs that would allow us to easily batch-convert our current .ra/.rm and .wav files to .mp3?

    == I found something a few months ago (and now can’t put my fingers on it) but a quick google brought this: http://www.boilsoft.com/rmtomp3/

  5. Jimmy,

    I really wish they would offer the CAL on MP3. About a year ago, i started trying to download old shows of interest, but I stopped when I realized the difficulty of putting the shows on a CD. I had to convert the files from RAM to a CD-friendly format, and then the problem was, as you said, only one show could fit on a disc.

    When you say “evil file format” referring to PDF, I wish you would also give that warning about Real Audio. I know I shouldn’t complain about a free program, but come on. Real Audio player puts so much junk on your computer and is so insidious that I can’t stand it. I even prefer evil Microsoft’s player to this.

    Please tell them that we would love to be able to have the shows on MP3. I would love to burn a few shows on related topics to share with friends or family occasionally for apologetic/evangelization purposes. I’m never going to do that, however, if the shows are only available on RAM. I would bet that there are plenty other folks that agree with me also.

  6. Adding on — Audible uses different levels of compression for different devices. At the lowest level (my Rio 500) an hour takes about 2 meg and sounds fine. A slightly higher quality takes about 4 meg. The next level is about 8 meg and the highest quality is 14+meg. I rarely use the high quality — the midquality is fine.

    So you’re looking at about 4 megs per hour long show, IMHO.

  7. Your shows in realmedia format seem to average 3.6 Mb each. Would they really take 20 Mb in mp3 format, for a similar sound quality? I thought mp3 was a compressed format!

    I’ve used RealAudio to burn cds from .rm files, without much trouble (having BLOCKED it with my firewall…)

  8. I currently download a month at a time and batch convert them from .rm to .wmf using Steambox Ripper 2.009 BLD Dec 16, 1999. It will batch convert to .mp3 as well. I would also like a format which I can download and use directly, .rm files are hard to work with and convert.

    I don’t see why people would not be able to convert the .mp3 files into .wav files and burn them on a regular CD, perhaps I’m missing something there. I have never tried, I burn a whole months worth onto CD and listen in my car on the way to work.

    I also agree that you need to find a format which is also in the < 4 meg range for download, otherwise the bandwith is going to get excessive. Good luck on your upgrade.

  9. For me, the current format works fine, although it is a bit lossy.

    I am probably one of the few people out there who already burns Catholic Answers Live shows to CD, so I can listen in my car.

    I use mplayer, and convert (and resample) the .ra file to a .wav file:

    mplayer ca031112.rm -ao pcm -af resample=44100 -aofile ca031112.wav

    Then, I burn that to a CD. Either that, or I oggenc it, so I can use amaroK to listen, instead of realplayer.

  11. Jimmy… This is a fantastic idea. Like the others posting above, I think it unlikely that most (though not all) would want to convert to regular CD format.

    I also use SteamBox Ripper. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can get it anymore. It is a fantastic tool for batch conversion and you can set the level of compression.

    I often download whole series of programs from EWTN and convert all at the same time to MP3 at a 32KBps format. That give me about a 6MB file for the MP3 version which is also the same size as the original more or less. Though I haven’t tested it, I can’t imagine that you would have that much of a problem burning files at this quality or even a bit lower to an audio CD anyway.

    I would be more than happy to work on the conversion process for CAL. If you want to arrange getting the files to me on DVD or CD, I can convert and mail back on DVD.

  12. Guess I’m the weird one…

    In the past I have downloaded shows and had to reverse engineer them to wav format so I can play them in my car on my commute. The process was to lengthy considering I had to sign up for a real player premium account just to be able to convert the format and then they started billing me twice for several months and I can’t seem to get it cancelled. Now that I have, I don’t bother downloading any shows because I know I’m not going to be able to listen to them except at the computer.

  16. I think a few might be interested in this: I convert the .ra files to .mp3 in order to be able to download them on my .mp3 player and then use a device that rebroadcasts the output of my mp3 player on a selectable FM channel, so I can listen to in on my car radio as I drive home from work.

  17. Noah,

    I have tried several of the rebroadcast devices (<$20 cheap ones) and they all had bad static issues, as well as not being strong enough to block out neighboring radio stations. I live in the Chicago area and the dial is full here. How well does the one you listed work? Have you compared it to others? Thanks, RickK

  18. MP3 would be awesome! As I mentioned in a comment to one of your previous posts a while back, we don’t get a Catholic radio station here, so it would be great if I could copy several of your shows onto an MP3 disc for listening in the car. I don’t see myself converting to .wav format to make a standard audio CD; I would instead use my MP3 discman which plays both audio CDs and MP3 discs.

    As far as what encoding level to use, I would recommend using at least 40 kbps, which is what is used for most of the audio files available on http://www.peterkreeft.com, and which seems to provide reasonably good sound quality. I would definitely recommend that you go with better sound quality than what’s currently available in your RealAudio files, because I have taped some of those to listen to in the car, and it’s sometimes difficult to understand what is being said.

    Thanks in advance for making this additional format available — it will result in at least one additional listener to your show, since my wife would love to listen, but listening on the computer isn’t convenient for her.

  19. I use the same SteamBox Ripper that Tim “Fric” Johnson mentioned. Unfortunately, Real had a problem with the company converting it’s files to other formats and the feature of converting Real format files was pulled from Steambox Ripper. Fortunately, those who kept the older versions were still able to perform the conversions. I’ve converted both CA and EWTN real files to MP3. In order to get the same quality the MP3 files end up almost twice the size of the Real files. Not a big deal if you have the drive space. I may give mini-stream ripper a try to see whether a newer codec can be used to reduce the size.

    I’ve got copies of all the CA files available from their ftp site and I’m in the process of converting them all to MP3. Once I’m done if you’re interested Jimmy I can burn these to DVD(s) and send them to you or CA. I’ve renamed the files in order to better sort them but they can easily be renamed back to the original format.

    Michael

  21. Would CAL still be available in Realplayer format for streaming or would that feature be disabled completely from the web site?

    I would like to vote for Realplayer for streaming content, and then vote for mp3 for downloading and podcasting.

  22. MP3 as soon as is humanly posssible !!! Puuulllllleeeeeeeeeezzzeeee!!! Please!!!!!!

    RealPlayer is truly, truly evil. Even if you disable real update in the REGISTRY (!!!!!!!) it will still reinsert itself back into the autostart folder. Every time I listen to CAL I am forced to run MSCONFIG afterwards to remove it again.

    It is truly insidious!!!! The best thing I read here today is about these alternatives. Even if CAL is never available on MP3 and even if the sun doesn’t rise tommorrow, today has been a good day because I found an alternative to real player! You see Jimmy – now you know why your blog is serving mankind!

  23. I would vote for MP3 format. There is really no reason for the fidelity of MP3Pro or Ogg Vorbis in a talk format and many players won’t play those formats. MP3 is the great common denominator that can be freely converted into other formats. I would think that recording the program at a reduced bit rate and in monaural would come in way less then 20 meg. When I record a three hour show via a stream in comes in at only 17 meg as an asf.

    I currently record your show via a free program called GetASFStream from EWTNs feed.

    http://play.rbn.com/play.asx?url=ewtn/g2ewtn/wmlive/wmradioen.asf&proto=mms?mswmext=.asx

    This allows me to play it back on my Flash MP3 Player which will playback (mp3, wma, ogg, asf) and it can also be played back via multiple software players.

    But having it as an MP3 download would be much better.

  24. I find that most audio cd burning software will automatically convert MP3’s to the WAV format to burn so you don’t really need a converter. Also, I’ve never heard of not being able to convert an MP3 back to a WAV because the compression rate is too high.

    Do you record the shows in any other way? I know it would be easier to just batch convert the RM’s to MP3 but the sound quality isn’t very good. Is there better source that you can get the shows from?

  25. Jimmy,

    PLEASE (p-l-e-a-s-e) DO take into consideration that if you switch formats some corporate networks do not allow their members to download large nor mp3 files (!!!).

    The current format has worked well for me for this past years.

    You could also consider ziping the files or even setting no extenstion to it and indicate the users to add the extention after downloading them.

  26. Miguel… Many big companies don’t allow the streaming of any real audio or downloading of it either. Some people would be hosed either way. The best bet, though it eats up server space, is to make it available in BOTH formats.

  27. Rick:

    I’ve tried two rebroadcasting devices, one which was battery powered (Belkin), and one (the Insten listed above) which uses the 12V supply. The former (Belkin) had a great deal of static plus could only broadcast on 4 frequencies (88.1, 88.3, 88.5, and 88.7 MHz). The latter (Insten) was much better and could broadcast on any frequency on the dial. My only complaint about the Insten is that it produces a faint high-pitched whine, but it really is only noticable when the car is stopped and everything was quiet. I’m guessing that the better reception is due to grounding with the 12V supply. This conceivably makes the signal stronger on the Insten (being a monopole radiator instead of a dipole radiator).

  28. I’d love to see some version of MP3 content. Especially indexed by question. I used to be able to catch CAL every day, but with a new baby, I never have the time to listen any more. I occasionally see questions on your recaps that make me say, dang, I’d like to hear that, but I can’t slog through the whole RealPlayer stream.

    Also, I’d like to suggest QuickTime as a potential Real substitute, or something you could offer in parallel with the Real stream.

  29. Go with either mp3 or Ogg Vorbis. For legal reasons, I would suggest Ogg Vorbis (which is completely free, while MP3 is technically not).

    Compression should be as high as possible while retaining listenability. This might include downsampling to 11kHz, using VBR encoding with a mean bpp of 32, whatever. This does make converting back to cd more difficult, but it does not make it impossible. Frankly, it is currently more of a pain to convert real audio files to .wav (for example, I don’t know of any free software to do it faster than real time).

    pax!

  31. Changing the CAL rm. files to other file types is something I do a lot so i can put them on my mp3 player. The program I use is Total Recorder. So far it works really well, but you have to record each file individually. The link to the program is here http://www.highcriteria.com

  32. Wow, this thread has so many posts!

    I haven’t had any problems with the current setup with the Real files. I just download and listen to them on the iBook and then trash them. It’s worked fine for me! So if you do make changes, whatever you do, don’t break it so I can’t listen to you any more! Another radio show I listen to managed to break something when they switched to another system recently and now I can’t seem to figure out how to play their shows anymore.

    :_(

    Though I can understand the animosity some Windows users might have for Real. That program used to be pretty obnoxious about inserting itself into all sorts of crazy places in Windows. I understand that newer versions behave themselves, but I can completely understand those who can’t forgive Real for the crimes of earlier versions. Luckily (WARNING! WARNING! Obnoxious new Mac user with a superior attitude begins to feel the need to force his religion on others! WARNING!), Real never insulted the intelligence of Mac users. It behaves normally on Mac, so no problem here. (And what’s this thing you call “Registry”? I seem to have terrible recurring nightmares of editing such a monstrous relic of horrendous computer operating system design from my past life, but the memories are getting ever so vague since dying to that life and being baptized into a new world of grace and joy called Mac OS X.)

    Many sites offer users a choice of Windows Media Player/RealPlayer/Quicktime formats. I always appreciate those sites that go the extra mile like that. And I fully appreciate the requests of some for MP3 (or similar) type formats that they can download to their iPods and such. I plan on eventually getting one of those new fan-dangled devices, so I might have similar needs at some point as well. I don’t know much about Audible/Ogg/AAC formats so can’t comment there. I hear AAC offers better quality at smaller file sizes than MP3.

    I’m all for upping the sound quality a little, but I hope that smaller file formats will still be available for those users still on dial-up. That’s not me, since I recently upgraded to broadband, but there’s still a lot of people who listen on dial-up I’m sure, so let’s not forget about them.

    I’m not sure which codecs offer best reproduction of talk radio at the smallest file sizes. I’ll ask around amongst some tech geeks I know if I get the chance.

  35. Robb, isn’t that proprietary, and requires technology warned against by the Department of Homeland Security?

    Let us stick with ASCII. Please.

  36. Wow…Catholic podcasting on those long airplane/car trips…I love this! My iPod broadcasts FM radio just fine…MP3 will be great and acceptable by most!

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