RPM: taw-audio-0.5.0-6.taw.fc3.noarch.rpm
SRPM: taw-audio-0.5.0-6.taw.fc3.src.rpm
Signed with my public key

Those RPMs are known to work with the Fedora Core 3 linux distribution, which means they should work just fine with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL4). They don't do anything crazy with python, perl, or shell, so they *should* in theory work on any Linux box (and maybe OSX) that can satisify the required software dependencies:
flac, vorbis-tools, id3lib, /usr/bin/mpg123, mplayer, lame, python
perl, perl-XML-RSS, perl-XML-Simple

The way I satisfy the dependencies is to create my own directory repository $HOME/rpmrepo, I then add that to my /etc/syconfig/rhn/sources file. I also add all my various favority yum repos to that file. I then just up2date taw-audio and everything "just works". I leave it up to you to figure out how to get up2date and yum repos to work together. It is really simple. Here's a good starting point: http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php#B

Todd Warner's Audio Tool Chest
Copyright (c) 2005 Todd Warner 
License: GPL v2 June 1991
-------------------------------------------------
$Date: 2006-10-30 05:31:35 -0500 (Mon, 30 Oct 2006) $

This package contains a series of audio conversion scripts that are convenient
for me. They formats handled are: mp3, ogg, flac, wav, and wma. Scripts
that cover nearly all conversion permutation are included. Quality is
set to be relatively high. The commandline options are purposely left simple.

Also included is a script to assist pulling down (capturing) internet audio
broadcasts: pls, m3u, and ram/rm. The resulting audio file is in mp3 format
and a podcast.xml RSS file is generated/apended as well.

For more information read the two sections of this README below:
CONVERSION UTILITIES and PODCAST UTILITY.


CONVERSION UTILITIES
====================

Usage:
    mp32wav.py *.mp3
    mp32ogg.py *.mp3
    mp32flac.py *.mp3

    wav2ogg.py *.wav
    wav2mp3.py *.wav
    wav2flac.py *.wav

    ogg2wav.py *.ogg
    ogg2mp3.py *.ogg
    ogg2flac.py *.ogg

    flac2wav.py *.flac
    flac2mp3.py *.flac
    flac2ogg.py *.flac

    Experimental:
    wma2wav.py *.wma
    wmac2mp3.py *.wma
    wmac2ogg.py *.wma
    wmac2flac.py *.wma

Can add verbosity with -v, -vv, -vvv, etc. Thats about it.

FLAC: preferred archive format. Lossless, compressed, can hold metadata.
OGG: preferred everyday mobile device, internet, etc. usage. Lossy. Metadata.
MP3: non-free, but most popular anagram to ogg. Lossy. Metadata.
WAV: a lossless archive format, required for audio CD creation, no-metadata.
WMA: some windows crap that you don't want to use if you can help it.

Metainformation will be retained (at least most). You can do a -v or -vv...
etc.  Metainformation (or metadata) is contextual information about a file,
like title, album, artist, etc. Ogg's and Flac's store metadata in the vorbis
format. mp3's use ID3tags (which suck, by the way). Waves don't have
metainformation, therefore they suck. Use Flac instead. :)

Flac's and wav's are *lossless* audio formats, so they are the ideal formats to
use. But the resulting files are *large*. Flac is better since it stores
metainformation as well and does some compression. Wav's are not compressed at
all.

Ogg's and mp3's are *lossy* audio formats (i.e. compressed and stripped of
sounds considered irrelevant). WARNING: converting music between the ogg and
mp3 formats *looses* some fidelity. Most people can't tell a difference, but
you want to avoid doing that if possible. The ideal archiving methodology is to
store audio in flac format and then convert from flac to whatever format is
convenient for everyday usage, archiving that flac file.

Why MP3's suck:
---------------
The mp3 file format is owned by . Therefore, it is
not a free format. The owner of the mp3 "technology" can at any moment demand
royalties and banned unauthorized usage of the format. Recently (2004?), they
now demand OEMs to pay a royalty for every decoder shipped. mp3's are evil,
only use them if you must. Instead, use ogg vorbis! If only ipods could decode
ogg. Grr.

The wma format is also proprietary. Don't use it. Even mp3's are better and
better supported.



PODCAST UTILITY
===============

General usage:
podcast.sh 'http://www.krvm.org/krvmsc-hq.pls' 60sbeat 60s
...or...
podcast.sh 'http://bluegrasscountry.org/a/bgc.m3u' bluegrass 2m
...or...
podcast.sh http://200.18.6.28/107-9.ram udesc 20s

Better yet, make a cronjob!
# Example: put the following in your crontab (assuming location of script is
# in /usr/bin/):
# Catch 60's beat 5pm mondays
59 16 * * mon /usr/bin/podcast.sh http://www.krvm.org/krvmsc-hq.pls 60sbeat 120m > /dev/null 2>&1
# Catch bluegrasscountry.org 5pm mondays
59 16 * * mon /usr/bin/podcast.sh http://bluegrasscountry.org/a/bgc.m3u bluegrass 120m > /dev/null 2>&1
# Catch udesc mondays
59 16 * * mon /usr/bin/podcast.sh http://200.18.6.28/107-9.ram udesc 20s > /dev/null 2>&1

Use Firefox's Live Bookmarks!
To play an entry, under firefox go to "Bookmarks->Manage Bookmarks"
and do "File->New Live Bookmark..." put in
"file:///home/rick/podcasts/podcast.xml" (change "home/rick" to whatever),
then under firefox go to "Bookmarks" and you should see your entries.