and they all work just fine. If you have a MAC, I cannot help you, and suggest you contact Iain Taylor, Neville Hunter or the other MAC users, on the Liobians Forum.

The CD

You may have obtained this CD from another person, and that’s cool – that’s the idea, in which case you need to know (a) what should be on it and (b) information that may be more recent about the contents and how to install and use them. The CD should contain 119 tracks of music, and about 12 other important files … I say “about” because it depends exactly on how the CD came into your hands.

Each of the music tracks is in MP3 format and carries its own title preceded by a unique number in the range 001 to 119 … I did this to get them into some order other than by artist or alphabetical title. When you copy the files to your hard drive, you can RENAME the titles and re-sort them for playing in any sequence you like, as a unique playlist.  Depending on your MP3 player, you may see different titles on your computer. There are more than 5 hours of music here … should get any party going !

A.            The CD carries three shareware items

cdex_130 (CDEX – a file format conversion utility and MP3 player)

Realplayer (RealPlayer – a audio player .. although this is a big file [13 megs ], you will need an internet connection to fully install it, and its Realplayer Jukebox feature)

Winamp278_full (another excelleny audio player, said by my headbanging 21 yr old son to be “wot everyone uses” – which means ‘im and ‘is mates)

The CD also contains 3 images which are used for the Jewel case

• CAVERN3.jpg
• JEWEL1.jpg
• JEWEL2.jpg

  There should be an EXCEL file titled

  Cellarful of Noise.xls which is a table showing the 119 tracks and the name of the original artists and some other comments which you may find interesting.

  There should be two HTML files, Readme.htm which is this one that you are looking at now, and The_Story.htm The Readme file is this one, yes you are reading it right now !

  The_Story.htm file tells the story about The Songs That Made the Beatles Famous, so it is an opinionated text editorial, about these songs, which you also may find interesting and even perhaps controversial. It attempts to explain why I have produced this CD for the Liobians, and why I think it to be “important”. Just my views, so they may contain errors of fact or judgement. There is also a small image file called arttilea.jpg which contains the black background for the html files. Lastly, there are the two Beatle photographs that appear on these two html pages ... BEATLES5.gif and BEATLES6.gif

  There should be a file called jewel01.jwl which is the Jewel Box images created by the program Easy CD Creator, the original application that I used to make this compilation.

  As you may not have the same technology (all CD burners come with their own software, which usually have a Jewel Box capability), for your         convenience I have also included not only the images, but a Powerpoint slide JEWEL3.ppt that might do the trick … you may have to play with size of the images or just do what I have been doing, use a pair of scissors … nobody will ever know about the bits you have cut off, and if the images are distorted, who cares … call it modern art.

  You may then find some other files that are not really important, that have “come over” with the CD creation process, you can ignore them. These may include any odds ‘n sods that those who created extra copies of this CD may have included deliberately or again, as an accidental consequence of the process they may have used.

  RECOMMENDATION

  RULE # ONE …. copy the contents of the CD to a suitable directory on your hard drive. Now … down to business, not only because that makes good sense, but you will be able to do some things on your hard drive that you can’t do with a read-only CD … yes   ?  

  To convert files into different formats, I have found CDEX to be the best software. There is also a plugin in Winamp (write to disc, under the output tab) which will write WAV files.

  To play this CD as it is right now on my laptop as I type this, I am using WINAMP (which #1 son James says is “wot everyone uses”)  ………. B-derrrrrrrrrrrr  …

  I prefer RealPlayer Jukebox (the screens are easier to read for my tired old eyes) ……. but the other programs work just fine too. I find it useful to create play lists, so I can get the tracks in the order that I want to hear them … if you don’t care about the order, then just set the options to “shuffle” or “random play”.

  Instructions for RealPlayer Jukebox  … you will have to play around yourself to get to understand how it works, but try this … Open the Jukebox (there is a blue “note” icon, top right of screen), Choose FILE from the tool bar, IMPORT WIZARD, Choose Drive and Directory, START SEARCH, PLAY in sequence as is, or choose “shuffle”. N.B. I recommend that you transfer the CD contents to your hard drive, although you can play straight from the CD … then you can edit the tracks, change the names, put in the missing artists names, do anything you like to get the 119 tracks in any order or add to them).

  Instructions for CDEX …. again, you will have to play around yourself to get to understand how it works, but try this … this is basically a file conversion program, but it will play the CD itself or play the contents if you have transferred them to your hard drive (recommended) … the instructions are VERY simple …. Choose TOOLS from the top menu, PLAY FILES, click on the up-pointing blue triangle on top left of screen, from the OPEN screen select directory and drive, SELECT ALL, OPEN, ….. away you go …..

  If you have a PC, you can copy the CD contents onto your hard drive, as is (recommended).  You can use CDEX to convert them to another format, such as .WAV and then burn the tracks onto other CDs for use in your car or stereo system. Whatever you choose, select the program you want to use and perhaps “shuffle” play, and away it goes   …  no need to do anything else apart from putting on yer dancing shoes ... then
  
  

  ...

  if your hands start a-clapping and your fingers start a-popping and
  your feet start a-movin' around;
  
  ... if you start to swing and sway when the band begins to play, a real cool
  and way out sound;
  
  ... and you get the "can't help its" and you just can't sit down - you feel like
  you've got to move around –

  “

  ... then you've got the Liobians’ CD in yer drive ! 

  You can burn this onto 5 other CDs (as Audio rather than Data) and use them on other stereo or car systems if you translate the files into an appropriate protocol … easy to do with any free audio file converter (I like CDEX Version 1.30 ...   which you can download from http://www.cdex.n3.net/) - and you will get maybe 25 or 30 or so on each CD. 

  Alternatively, I have included a copy on this CD of all you need to get going with all of these products, WINAMP, RealPlayer and CDEX ... you will see them on the CD. Some of them require a connection to the Internet to be running when you execute the installation file for the first time .. I have tested this, it works just fine. I recommend that, if you are unsure, used CDEX for conversions and RealPlayer Jukebox to play the tracks.  

  MP3 ON A MAC

  I am indebted to Austin Hughes for this informaion re playing MP3 files on a Mac.

  Quicktime offers pretty basic options. A separate player with tone and volume controls opens for each file. You can create a favourites list and select from it. Of course this opens pictures as well. Anyone with a later Mac and a USB connection - i-macs, G3, G4 and soon the G5 - with a suitable CD reader can use either the OS9 or OSX versions of Apple's free iTunes and get more extended "Jukebox" facility. This is now available for download from Apple as version 2.0.
  
  People with older PPC Macs etc will probably have their own favourite MP3 player. Most will have the option of loading and saving playlists and many other features. I think the generally agreed best is AUDION. This is available as version 2.6.1 by download from http://www.panic.com/audion/.
  It is commercial but cheap and is packed with features listed on the page. You can take a time-limited demo version. It handles streaming playing well too.
  
  Other simpler but common players, again with playlists, are MACAST and SOUNDJAM.   These are not freeware. Most of these players appear on "MacFormat", "UK MacWorld", and "Computers and Music" free software CDs in time limited demo versions.   A site like www.tucows.com will turn up a range of simpler freeware players like SoundApp.
  
  You may wish to move on to explore Multimedia players.
  

  JEWEL BOX

  The Jewel Box inserts have been produced using Adaptec CD Jewel Version 1.02, but the images are included on this CD should you wish to use another program for the Jewel Case.  Hopefully, I have thought of most things <grin>.

  SECURITY

  I strongly recommend that you exit all other Windows programs before attempting installation of the programs and music, with the exception of your virus detection software. The original CD has been scanned with Norton Anti Virus software on 31 December 2001, Version NAV 5.00.1c, build dated 29 Dec 2001, and was clean on that date .... take your own precautions.

  I do hope you enjoy this journey back in time to the days of the Cavern…. listening to the songs that made the Beatles famous.

     

  John Snelson, Turramurra, NSW, Australia

  December 26 2001