Most of the MIDI music is pretty simple, but you can have some
fun playing with it.
Linux distributions that include the KDE desktop (such as Fedora) often come with the kmid MIDI
player. Kmid provides a GUI interface for midi music, including the capability to display karaoke
lyrics in real time. To start kmid in Fedora, select Sound & Video???KMid (or type kmid & from a
Terminal window).
Performing Audio File
Conversion and Compression
There are many different formats for storing and compressing speech and music files. Because
music files can be large, they are usually stored in a compressed format. While MP3 has been the
compression format of choice, Ogg Vorbis is quickly becoming a favorite for compressing music
in the open source community. Ogg Vorbis has the added benefit of not being encumbered by
patents as MP3 is.
Linux tools for converting and compressing audio files include:
SoX (Sound eXchange)??”A general-purpose tool for converting audio files among a
variety of formats.
oggenc??”A tool for specifically converting music files to Ogg Vorbis format.
Converting Audio Files with SoX
If you have a sound file in one format, but you want it to be in another format, Linux offers some
conversion tools. The SoX utility can translate to and from any of the audio formats listed in
Table 20-1.
Pages:
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019