For those of us that are fans of Old Time Radio (OTR), until
recently there were very few options to listen to these classic
programs. To listen to them, you would have to use a PC or
laptop. This was not very portable or convenient. Personally, I
like to listen to the shows at night before I go to sleep, but
my computer is nowhere near my bedroom.

With the recent proliferation of CD and memory based MP3
players, a new option has emerged to listen to our favorite
classical radio programs. These tiny devices can not only be
used to listen to music, but can now be used to listen to Old
Time Radio shows. As many of the OTR shows are recorded at low
bit rates and frequencies, you can typically load several
hundred hours of shows onto a single CD. If you are using a
memory based MP3 player, even a 64 mb player will hold several
half-hour shows.

Of course, not everything is perfect with OTR shows. As I
mentioned earlier, because of the age of these programs (poor
recording quality, mono audio, etc...) they are typically
recorded at low bit rates and low frequencies. Many of the newer
MP3 players have no problem handling these formats, but not all.
If you find you're player can't handle a OTR program, you will
need to re-encode the show at a higher frequency (e.g. 44 kHz)
and bit rate. There are several freeware programs available that
allow you do to this. If you have not yet purchased an MP3
player, ensure that it is capable of playing low bit rate (e.g.
32 kbps) and low frequency (e.g. 22 kHz) MP3 encoded files. My
first CD MP3 player could only handle 44 kHz frequency encoded
files, and I always found it cumbersome to have to re-encode
files before being able to listen to them on my player.

As a fan of OTR, you'll no doubt be aware that there are
literally thousands of sites on the internet that offer free
downloads of almost every show imaginable. Most of these shows
have had there copyrights expire, and are now in the public
domain, free for you to download and enjoy. For those of you
that would like complete collections of MP3 shows, many sites
offer CD's and DVD's packed full of OTR MP3 files. The fees that
are charged are quite reasonable, considering that the material
being packaged is in the public domain.

Another source of OTR shows are on the various P2P (Peer to
Peer) file sharing networks. I won't name any of them here, as
there are many available. Using your P2P application, a simple
search of "OTR" will typically bring you a listing of thousands
of files. The greatest thing about using P2P applications for
this is that you don't have to worry about the RIIA coming after
you for downloading copyrighted material. All these programs are
free to copy and share as much as you want.

Dragnet never sounded so good!

About the author:
John Eady is the owner and webmaster for href="http://www.your-mp3-store.com/">www.your-mp3-store.com.
Please feel free to publish this article as long as you keep
the link to my site active.

Author : John Eady
Site : www.goarticles.com

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