On Tue, 25 Sep 2001, Mike Hicks wrote: MH> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010925/tc/media_universal_piracy_dc_1.html Isn't this sort of stuff against the red and yellow book CD standards? I don't understand how they can label these as Compact Discs(tm) when the very standard that defines it is broken. Seems fishy to me, anyone smell a class action suit? On another note, most rippers have an option to rip in analog. Yes, it takes longer, yes, the sound quality is diminished, but if you're ripping to MP3, you're losing a lot anyway so what's the difference if it comes from an analog source? Anyone with more audio expertise care to comment? MH> Has anyone played much with plugins for xmms (or anything, for that MH> matter) that will weight certain songs differently? Can XMMS use the MP3 ID tags? I use Music Match on both Windows and Linux, and I can super-tweak my play lists based on any combination of ID tags. <shameless plug> On both Windows and linux, I have yet to see a finer piece of software for MP3 ripping, storing, and playing. The free version can do all the MP3 stuff, but for $30 you get lifetime upgrades and neat features like burning CDs straight from MP3s and so forth. The only down side is that it's pretty bulky and runs on WINE instead of native code. </shameless> -Brian