MPEG-FAQ 4.0:

Which archive is mostly related to MPEG-Audio ?

The Internet Underground Music Archive is the biggest archive
storing music in MPEG-Audio format. The already have more than
500 bands presenting their music and on of the nicest Web-sites
ever seen ! Just connect to

    URL=http://www.iuma.com/

  .___ ____ ___ _____    _____   
  |   |    |   \     \  /  _  \       the net's first hi-fi music archive
  |   |    |   /  Y   \/  /_\  \     .:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.
  |   |    |  /   |    \   |    \    The Internet Underground Music Archive 
  |___|______/____|__  /___|__  /      bands/music/labels/images/bubbles
  ===================\/=======\/============================================
                         How to Use IUMA
Last edited 2/2/94

Here are a few pointers about how to make the most efficient use of
IUMA and the music on it. You may also wish to peruse the
Frequent Asked Questions (FAQ), although it's currently undergoing a 
complete revision. 8)

The first and most important thing to note is that IUMA is best explored 
and used via World-Wide Web (WWW) clients such as Lynx and NCSA Mosaic. 
The WWW is a hypertext-based method of purusing the net that is 
both more intuitive than FTP and Gopher, yet downwards compatible with FTP
and Gopher.

NCSA Mosaic requires a direct network connection or SLIP to the Internet 
and versions are available for Xwindows boxes, Macintoshs and Windows PCs.
FTP to "ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu" and look in the dir "/Mosiac" for all current 
versions.

Lynx is a very good text-mode WWW browser available as UNIX program that 
one runs from their UNIX account. As long as "tar" and "uncompress" are 
not foreign to you, you should have no problems making it work.
You can FTP lynx from ftp.wustl.edu in the /packages/www dir.

The next most important thing to first realize is that all of the music on 
IUMA comes a few forms:

MPEG
  This is the format of the best stereo copies of the music online. You need
  a special player to decode the MPEG compression and play the music on your
  system once it's downloaded. IUMA has a few freely distributable
  MPEG audio players already available for you to download:

    XingSound Player for Windows as mpgaudio.zip
    Tobias Bading's MPEG audio player source as maplay.tar.Z
       People using this on UNIX workstations (particularly Suns), 
       should take a look at the accompanying textfiles.

    Aware Corporation has graciously produced a shareware MPEG audio player 
    for the Macintosh which will be availble for distribution in the 
    next few weeks.

ADPCM
  The ADPCM format is probably going to be phased out of being included
  in IUMA since the quality is not as good as MPEG II. In any case,
  the files have the extension .WAV and are in the MS-ADPCM format.
  The program Cool Edit (cool131.zip) can decode and play them on 
  Windows PCs.

AU
  Some (eventually all) bands will have a Sun Audio (au) sample file which
  is available to download a small 15 second sample of the band before  
  deciding that you wish to download the entire MPEG song. When listening 
  to these note that the Sun Au files are 8bit mono for that full-on 
  compressed midrange AM Radio sound and therefore will sound nothing 
  remotely like the awesome stereo MPEG file. Most machines can 
  understand this format so nothing special should be needed beyond normal 
  audio tools to download and play these files. Player for Macintoshes 
  and Windows PCs can be found on the Internet.

If you have any questions please mail ianc@sunsite.unc.edu.