Now, for the legal parts of this: Emulators themselves are not illegal. They are simply programs written using freely available information, which do not contain anything that is copyrighted (Or at least they're not supposed to... If they do, and don't have a license to use this copyrighted material, then they are illegal.). The ROMs, on the other hand, are quite a different story. They are (For the most part, there are some exceptions) direct copies of copyrighted material being distributed and used without permission, and therefore ARE ILLEGAL. Even if you own a copy of the game, possessing the ROM may be illegal. Also, don't believe any of that "Delete within 24hrs" or "These are provided for educational purposes only" crap. Those are not exceptions to the copyright law. If you're concerned about staying on the legal side of things, don't bother with emulators (But, to be honest, I haven't heard of any copyright infringement suits being filed against someone for downloading a ROM. I'm just letting you know that it is illegal and you're getting involved with them at your own risk). And finally, DON'T ASK US FOR ROMS. We will not provide you with any, nor will we tell you where to find any. (Try a search engine, try an emulator site, just don't try here. We're the Videogame Music Archive, not ROM Central.)
If you're still interested in finding out more about emulators, go to Zophar's Domain.
The first thing is you, but I don't want to be insulting, so I won't dwell on that one, as it probably isn't the case anyway.
The second thing is your sound card. This is the most likely possibility. If your computer is like most computers, your soundcard is probably one of the most overlooked pieces of hardware in it. You need more RAM, you need a faster processor, you need more hard drive space, these things you notice, but your sound card works in games just as well as it did the day you got your computer. That's the problem. Many people with older systems or recycled soundcards will have a Sound Blaster 16 (or compatible) card in their system. A standard SB16 uses FM synthesis for MIDI, and that is what sucks. FM makes most drums sound identical to the seashore instrument, makes the gunshot sound like a drum, and makes most every other instrument sound horrible and not even close to what it should (Except for the Square wave, which it does quite accurately). If this is the case, not all is lost for you. There is something called wavetable that does a very good job at banishing the evils of FM. Instead of synthesizing instruments like FM does, wavetable plays actual instrument samples. The quality of the wavetable relies heavily on the quality of the samples, however, but you are almost guaranteed to get a better sound than FM (If you don't, complain to the person/company you got it from). You have several options on getting wavetable on your computer. The simplest (and cheapest) option is a software wavetable emulator (Addressed in a later question). But, if you have a little extra money, it would probably be best to upgrade to a Wavetable sound card. I have seen them for less than $30. Newer computers should come with wavetable already, either in the form of an actual card or through something such as the Microsoft Music Synth. These are of varying quality, but all should sound better than FM.
The third possibility is that the file itself is no good. A MIDI file is not a direct translation of the song, so something may be lost in the MIDI version. Usually this loss is ignorable (The flute doesn't sound quite right, the guitar hits the wrong note every time, the piano is too loud), but occasionally I have heard songs that have made me wonder if the sequencer was completely deaf when they sequenced it. These files transcend the differences between FM and wavetable or the differences between particular sound cards, these files are bad all around.
If even after all of this you still think MIDI sucks, well, you are entitled to that opinion, but don't come complaining to us about it. If you don't like them, don't download MIDI files and don't visit this site. It's that simple. MIDI was not designed to do some of the things you're probably thinking it should (Voices are an example). Complaining about that would be like yelling at a dog because it can't fly.
As for Macintosh, I have been informed that it is possible to switch between wavetable and FM by swapping the current QuickTime Musical Extensions with an older version. This will likely require a restart, and as it involves fiddling with system files, I make no guarantee that it will work as I've been told.
Of course, neglecting the storage size and copyright issues for a moment, there's also a small little thing called "Bandwidth". You see, on the information superhighway, MIDI files are basically the equivalent of a two seater micro-compact import car. Digital audio formats are roughly comparable to a mile and a half-long, three lane wide convoy of Snowbirds, with their mobile-home sized RVs towing huge SUVs and large boats. The Information Superhighway is a toll road, but we've worked out an agreement wherein some guy will pay the toll for all our cars if he can put up billboards along the road. That's just fine and works great if all we're driving is micro-compact imports. But then let's say we move to the convoy of RVs. Suddenly the road is clogged and the Mr. Billboard isn't nearly as happy. True story: Another game music website tried to have an MP3 site. They had the soundtrack to around 40 games. In two days, over 375 GB of files were transferred. Our site never gets anywhere remotely close to that kind of traffic in a month, let alone two days, and this was before word had spread about the site. Traffic would have increased. Needless to say, they don't have that MP3 archive anymore.
So, to summarize, no, we do not have digital audio, and we never will, so don't even bother asking us about it.
A .mod (And all the derivative module formats) is similar in that it contains note data, telling what to play and where. The major difference between .mod and .mid is that .mod files also contain the instrument data. This means that the files can be played on many different systems and sound exactly the same. .mod files are generally larger than .mids, because the instrument data takes up quite a bit of space, but they are still smaller than .mp3s.
.mp3s (And .wav, .ra, .au, etc.) are digital audio. They are straight recordings of the song. CD-quality music requires 44,100 samples per second, with 16 bits per sample. That's 88,200 bytes for one second (And that's not even counting the stereo, which doubles it). Most are compressed in various ways, but they do not begin to approach the size of a MIDI or module.
In a .mid or .mod, the music is recorded note by note, not by samples. Each note takes up the same amount of space, no matter the length, and that space is just a few bytes. While a second of a digital recording may be 88,200 bytes, even if it's a second of silence, a second of a .mid or a .mod might not take up any space at all if no new notes are started during it.
Of course, a digital recording is the real thing, while a MIDI is just an imitation with limits. A MIDI can't have lyrics or undefined sounds in it (Not counting sound fonts and that sort of thing). But digital recordings are BIG. Even compressed .mp3 and high quality .ra files are usually several megabytes in size. MIDIs rarely get over 100K.
MIDI to module converters and module to MIDI converters exist and are relatively easy to find by doing a shareware/freeware search. However, due to the differences in the file format (Mainly due to the fact that modules have samples and MIDIs do not), conversion is rarely perfect. MIDI to module conversion is generally better than the other way around because decent instrument samples can be made to use for the module, but when converting from module to MIDI, all samples must be discarded and turned into the 127 preset MIDI instruments, thereby creating a substantial quality loss.
Converting from a digital music format to a module is possible, but pointless because all the converters will do is chop the digital music file into smaller bits and store them as samples in the module. Doing this will probably only increase the file size and decrease the quality. Converting from a module to a straight digital recording is possible with little to no loss of quality.
MIDI to a digital recording (Such as WAV or MP3) is possible, and detailed in a later question.
Converting digital audio to MIDI is a much different story. The short way to tell it is "No, you can't do that", but that's not entirely accurate. It is possible to convert a digital audio format to MIDI. Of course, it has to be a monophonic, one-track (In other words, a single instrument) sound which is clear and uncluttered. By determining the pitch of the audio in the file, the corresponding MIDI note can be found and a MIDI file can be created. The results, however, are often horrible and unrecognizable, thus making the entire process worthless. For those who absolutely must have a demonstration of exactly how horrible and awful it sounds, follow these simple steps: Get a cat. Get that cat drunk, I mean completely plastered. Have the cat walk across a piano or keyboard for a few minutes. Randomly delete 90-95% of all the notes the cat hits. There you go, a quick demonstration of digital audio->MIDI conversions. (Except the cat method is slight more accurate.) Currently, the best way to convert digital audio to MIDI is to do it yourself, playing it by ear.
Here's a double whiz-bang ultra-boffo sized list of converters that are available. Be warned, very few of these will produce anything you'll actually want to listen to, and if you upload any of the results of these conversion to our site we will have you hunted down by a pack of hungry spider rats. So don't do it.
In the past it has been policy to accept touched-up conversions, the output of converter programs sometimes being so poor that to get a decent file would require nearly as much time and work as sequencing the file from scratch would need. However, more recent programs are able to produce near-perfect conversions, accurately selecting instruments and with minimal mutilation of note data.
As this means that pretty much anyone could now easily acquire entire soundtracks of MIDIs for several games in a single day, compared to someone sequencing by ear who would probably require months to do the same, we think it is grossly unfair to provide greater credit to the person who did little more than click a few buttons, than the person who drove themselves mad listening to a three second fragment over and over trying to pick out all the notes, for a single day’s MIDI-making.
This does not mean to say that sequencing by listening to ripped music is disallowed, however. While purists might think that channel muting and such is as good as cheating, sequencing a fresh MIDI using a converted file certainly doesn't count as the forbidden "uploading a conversion". Don't be tempted to copy and paste anything in to your MIDI, though. Then your file would contain converted material, which you must not upload.
If you're not happy about this policy, sidelining the unfairness issue, arguing that denying conversions will discourage growth of the archive and reduce the quality of it, go look at the size of the New-Files directory. Now, this question isn't dynamic, but I bet new-files still has a lot of MIDIs in it, even now. If we were to actively encourage ripped MIDIs, which, remember, can be made in bulk very quickly, we just wouldn't be able to handle it.
Also, not all conversions are perfect, remember. Not every converted file would actually pass the rigorous quality control checks each file goes through, since some people just wouldn't bother to check that their conversions were up to scratch, with that policy in force. If we were to realistically deal with that extra workload of masses of rips, we would probably have to make compromises, the most obvious place for those compromises being... the rigorous quality control checks. Ultimately that would decrease the quality of the archive.
If you persist "but your sequenced files aren’t of consistent quality", then I’d have to agree. However, I’d say the same was true of converted MIDIs, as I’ve mentioned. And while it is fair to say that some sequencers are not as good as others, at least they are putting some effort into the task and trying to create as good a reproduction as they can (if they’re not and it shows, their file will not make it into the archive anyway).
Besides, if you want to listen to converted MIDIs, you can make your own easily enough, regardless of your sequencing experience and ability.
In review, if you actually wrote the song, you are the composer. If you made a MIDI file from a song you did not write, you are the sequencer. If you wrote a song and turned it into a MIDI file, then you are both the composer and sequencer.
Please don't ask us to give you sheet music; we will ignore any such requests. This is a MIDI archive, not a sheet music library. It's great that you want to try playing or singing music from your favorite video game, but if you're willing to make that effort, you should be willing to make the extra effort to obtain sheet music on your own as well.
Of course, that does not mean that other cards can not use things somewhat similar to SoundFonts. Many other newer sound cards allow you to load new wavetable sound patches and have their own SoundFont-like files. (And this is all ancient history to you GUS fans out there.) And Microsoft has its DLS files, which are like soundfonts for a soft synth.
GS stands for... Well, I've heard "General Standard" and "General Sound", and I don't really care what it stands for exactly. Anyway, GS is an extension to GM, which allows 128 different instrument sounds on each of the 128 standard GM instruments. So, in theory, with a full GS sound set, one could have 128 different Acoustic Nylon Guitars, and 128 different Xylophones, etc. In practice, however, the extra sound sets are used for various sound effects, like barking dogs. On a non-GS card, any GS instruments used will default back to the GM standard patch at that number, which means, for instance, that a barking dog could turn into Marimba. Your card may be GS compatible, but may not be. Check the documentation to see. (The QuickTime MIDI synth is GS-compatible.)
XG is eXtended GM (I believe...). It's a Yamaha creation that adds new sounds and commands onto GM. Similar to GS, XG files will play on GM equipment, but probably won't sound all that good. Unless your sound card is a new Yamaha card, it probably won't support XG. (The Yamaha wavetable emulators support XG.)
FM is Frequency Modulation, just like your good old radio. It's a method of producing sound used for instruments. Rather than storing an actual recording of the instrument, like wavetable sound does, FM playback stores basically an equation for a sound. FM can allow for some rather accurate reproduction of sounds, as well as allow a high level of control over the way something sounds. Unfortunately, neither of those benefits are present in the mass market FM sound cards of ages past. Instead, FM could have stood for Fouled-up Music, with it often being difficult to tell the difference between a piano, guitar, and flute...
AWE is Advanced Wave Effects. It's not really an extension to MIDI at all, it's more of a Creative Labs buzzword designed to sell a line of soundcards. These cards do have a little sound processing that they'll do, so you can set the playback to sound like it's in a large concert hall or in a small room AWE MIDIs are simply files that have been tweaked to sound the best on an AWE sound card. Occasionally, however, they will also include soundfonts for playback (See above). To my knowledge, there are no AWE wavetable emulators, but one would be pretty much useless anyway... Unlike GS and XG, if you do not have an AWE card, you won't miss out on any instruments while playing an AWE MIDI.
Now, on to the files:
Before I get into specifics, I have to go into a few definitions and explanations. The first is Infringement. Copyright infringement is doing something with a copyrighted work that only the copyright holder has the legal right to do, without their permission. These rights include copying and distributing, displaying the work publicly, and preparing a derivative work based on the original. The second definition I have is Fair Use. Fair use basically allows you to legally commit copyright infringement. Fair use is what allows you to make a tape of your favourite CD and not have to worry about the feds coming to bust you for it. However, there are restrictions, so you can't just make hundreds of copies of a CD and sell it, and claim it was fair use. Fair use sometimes requires an educational or research use, and is determined by considering the following factors:
Now an explanation. Copyright law is generally not criminal law, it is civil. That means you probably won't go to jail for copyright infringement (There are some exceptions. Deliberate fraud and theft (Making a copy and passing it off as the original, that sort of thing) are generally handled as criminal cases), but it does mean that you can be sued. Whether that's good or not depends on your opinion as to which is better: A 300 pound musclar tatooed guy named Bubba making you his girlfriend (Or, as the case my be, a 300 pound muscular tatooed woman named Bubba making you her girlfriend), or a swarm of corporate lawyers taking all the money you currently have and all the money you'll have in the future. This also means that the state won't decide whether or not to get you, it will be the companies that hold the copyright (Or the agencies that look after this sort of thing). Their bottom line in taking action will probably be money, not whether or not you're breaking the law and infringing their copyright. They'll get after you if what you're doing costs them more money than the legal fees they'll have to pay to go after you. (Most likely. I'm not saying that they won't otherwise... There's always the possibility that they want to make an example out of someone...)
Okay, now how all this relates to everything:
Game ROMs: Not legal in one bit. (Commercial game ROMs, anyway.) You can't say that the games are used for "Educational purposes" unless you're in a class on video game design, which you're probably not, and even if you were, there'd be a good chance it wouldn't fall under fair educational use. That's strike one for fair use. Strike two is the nature of the item. It's a video game. Not much social or cultural value to that. The entire thing is being distributed, strike three. And the final stike is the effect on the market. It completely destroys it. If someone can play a game on their computer perfectly, they have no use in purchasing the real thing. Age is not a factor in this. The oldest Atari game is just as protected against copyright infringement as the newest GameCube game, as you never know when a company might decide to repackage and sell their old Atari games again (As Activision has done). Age is probably a factor the companies will consider if looking to go after you, because it ties in directly with the money (If it's an old game they're not selling, they're not losing any money), but it is not a factor in the eyes of copyright law, at least not until a number of years have past, and even the oldest games aren't close to hitting that age. Furthermore, some games specifically prohibit making backup copies of the games, so the "You may only use this if you have the original game" thing is knocked out there, as well. Emulation itself, however, is perfectly legal (As long as nothing copyrighted was used in the making of the emulator). It's been supported as legal since the early console machines and the first PC clones.
MP3, WAV, RA, other digital audio: Contrary to what most people think, MP3 is not illegal. There is nothing illegal about the audio type in itself. Where the illegal bit comes in is in the content of the file. A WAV, RealAudio, MP3, and whatever other sound file you want, no matter the quality, are all the same degree of illegal if their content is the same thing. They're basically just like an audio tape (Unless you're using the audio tape as a storage medium using a tape drive...). You record your voice or your own band, you can do whatever you want with it. You record one of your CDs for your own use, you can play it in your car or lend it to a friend, no problem. You record one of your CDs and give a copy out to everyone that comes along, that's not legal. Now, how this applies to video game music. Under the strict interpretation of the law, no, it isn't legal. Under the interpretation that the copyright holders are probably going to use, sure, do whatever, just don't sell it. The music of the video games isn't what sells it, it's just a part of thew whole, and the whole makes the money. Of course, as some games have soundtracks, they might not like it if you're distributing those.
MIDI and Modules: Although these are two different types of files, they fit under the same category here. They fall into a wonderfully large grey area. They're not straight out recordings of the originals (Unless it's a module made by an idiot), so they're not in that area of copyright law, and they're also not quite derivative works. They're not a performance by the copyright holder, and they're significantly changed from the original. They don't really fit into any specific section of the law. That does not mean, however, that they're not covered by copyright law. I'm sure lawyers have the answers as to where they fit, so they could bring a copyright infringement suit against a MIDI site. As I mentioned in the section above, the music of a video game isn't the money maker. That gives some insulation. Furthermore, there's also the benefit of being so different from the original that the conflicts with the soundtracks being available may also be avoided. A person still has a reason to purchase the soundtrack, even if they have a MIDI or module of all the songs.
For more information, see this site.
To make an icon is pretty simple. There's two ways to do it. First, and simplest is to use a simple graphics editor like Paint, and make an 8-bit (Or less) 32x32 pixel uncompressed bitmap file (Be sure to save it with an .ico extension). Draw on that what you want, and it will make a perfectly valid icon file. The only drawback to this is the fact that the colour there's the most of in the icon immediately becomes the transparent colour. To fix that, you'll want to get some dedicated icon creation software. There's plenty of shareware/freeware programs out there for this sort of thing. We used Icon Easel for ours, but if you want something different, a search on Download.com or Shareware.com will provide alternatives.
Recommended Method to Convert Any Audio Stream (Including MIDI) to MP3 on Windows XP:
If you don't want to deal with wires or have a crummy soundcard, there are also a number of programs available, such as WAVMaker, which will allow you to convert MIDI to WAV using high quality instrument patches or soundfonts.
"A driver in the Baja Desert Dune Buggy Rally is found dehydrated at a checkpoint. The check point is 25 miles due south from a point on the Main Road, and this point is 70 miles due west from a hospital in town along the straight Main Road. The driver must be taken to the hospital as fast as possible. A dune buggy can average 40 miles an hour across the sand and an ambulance can average 60 on the Main Road. How far from the previously mentioned point on the Main Road should the dune buggy and ambulance meet in order to get the driver to the hospital in the shortest amount of time?"
Don't you just love problems that involve d=rt, the Pythagorean Theorem, and minimization, all in one? Okay, here goes. You're solving this for minimum TIME, not minimum distance. So, the answer is not "Drive straight to the hospital". Nor is the answer "Drive straight to the road". It's somewhere in between. Also, you don't want the point where the two times are equal. That just wouldn't make any sense. If you went with that line of thinking, then it would be possible to have an ambulance so fast that there's no possible way the dune buggy can get to any point along the road in the time it would take the ambulance to get there, so they never could meet at a point at the same time. And you don't want to find the minimum time for each section, as it would be quickest for the dune buggy to go straight to the road and the ambulance not to go anywhere, but that's not going to help much. So, it's somewhere in between, where the minimum total time is.
Ah, but how to find that point? Well, first, find some distances. You want to know how far down the main road they should meet, so make this distance you variable. So, that's X, what's the rest of the distance to the hospital? Even though I know you didn't say 70-X, we'll say you did and work from there. Now, what about the distance from the checkpoint to the point on the road? Well, that makes a right triangle, with sides of 25 and X, so... sqrt(625+X^2) is what you were going to say, right? Great, now you have the distances, but you still want times. Easy solution. Remember that old and useful Distance=Rate*Time formula? Solve that for time, then use it with what you have. That will give you sqrt(625+X^2)/40 for the time in the buggy, and (70-X)/60 in the ambulance. Now, remember, you want the TOTAL time. So, that's those two added together. Good, all the troublesome bits are past. If you're in pre-calc, put this equation into a graphing calculator and find the minimum. If you're in calc, you know what to do to find the minimum from here by hand.
22.3 miles, right? Good. Now all you have to do is figure out why Kalrac put this in the VGMusic.com FAQ.
Unless you meant record the MIDIs on to a CD... If that's what you wanted, put down the lighter and get a fire extinguisher and do something about that bonfire in front of you. There are actually two different interpretations of what you're asking. Either you want to take your collection of MIDI files and archive them on a CD for later use on your computer, or you want to take the files and put them on a CD so that you can listen to them in any CD player, just like you've done with all those illegal MP3s you've downloaded. The first one is easy. Use your favourite CD burning software, and copy the files on to the CD using the standard method. There, now you have a CD full of MIDIs that you can use on any computer that has a MIDI player. That probably isn't what you wanted to know, though. You probably wanted to record them on to a CD so you could listen to them in your car. (Warning: Listening to music from racing games while driving is not recommended as it is very dangerous... While video game cars may flip, roll, grind, and smash without taking so much as a dent or a scuff in the paint, it is not likely that your car, even though it is also from Japan, will fare as well when you drive it off a bridge at 170.) That is a slightly more complicated process. First, you must record the MIDIs into WAVs. This is occasionally as simple as opening your recording, pressing "Record", then playing the MIDI. Other times it can be as complicated as running dubbing cables between two PCs. In any case, the process for doing that is outlined in a different question, so there's no point in repeating myself more than I already do.
On a final note, there is no point in going through MP3 on the way to CD Audio. MP3 is a lossy compression, so the result will sound worse than the original. Go directly from MIDI to WAV, then do the WAV to the CD Audio.
Next down the line are game consoles. If you can emulate it (Not that I advocate doing that), most emulators will have a screenshot key. If you can't or don't want to emulate it, you'll have to use your actual console for the pictures. A video capture card/accessory is extremely helpful in these circumstances. Simply hook up the console to your computer, then use the video capture capability of your computer to snap as many shots as you'd like. Quality probably isn't as perfect as an emulator would be, but it isn't horrible. If you don't have a capture device, then maybe you have a digital camera. Get a nice view of the screen without too much glare, and snap away, then transfer the images to your computer. Quality won't be wonderful, but you should get the idea of what's on he screen, anyway. A webcam might work as a capture device or a digital camera, depending on the connections. (Remember, you can point the webcam at a TV, if you have to.) No emulator, no capture card, no digital camera, no webcam? Do you perhaps have a regular camera, a scanner, and a one hour photo nearby? Snap, develop, hope you got a full scan of the screen and not the top or bottom half, then scan away and presto, simple as that, picture on the computer. If you don't have any of that, there's always Paint...
Let's look at this another way: Why shouldn't you have to pay for it? What makes it different from any other product? Is it the ease and simplicity of stealing it? Is it that you don't like the price? Do you ever go into a supermarket and say "This should be free, I shouldn't have to pay for these marshmallows."? Do you go into a bookstore and say "This should be free, I shouldn't have to pay for Bridget Jones' Diary." And how far do you think you'd get if you went into a BMW dealer and said "This should be free, I shouldn't have to pay for this car."? Why do you look at software any differently? Do you have any concept of how much goes into writing a production quality software product? You might try to say "It crashes every two hours, it's full of bugs, I shouldn't have to pay for that garbage", but do you know how many bugs aren't in it? It's not up to you to decide how much someone else should sell something to you for. If you don't like the price, don't buy it, and do without it. If you don't like the sticker on the Beemer, try scouring the classifieds for a Yugo. If you don't like the label on the book, try the time-limited demos at the library. And if you don't like the everday low price on the marshmallows, there's a dumpster behind the restaurant with all the free food you could ever want.
In other words, if you aren't willing to pay for the software, you do not deserve to use it. If you cannot afford the software, you cannot use it. Look around for an alternative product that is free because the people writing it actually are giving it away. And if you're going to complain about having to pay for software, write your own. See how long until you want to be paid for it, too.
If you're using a Mac, QuickTime should play them just fine.
If you're using Linux, then there's bound to be a wonderful player out there somewhere, but since you'll have to find the dependencies, compile them, discover that you're missing a dependency of a dependency, find that, ./configure, make, make install, then manually copy the files when make install doesn't work, and go through all that process only to find out that your soundcard doesn't have a driver that maps MIDI to /dev/sequencer, which is the only place the program will look for it, and even though you have the source code, there's nothing you can do because /dev/sequencer appears a hundred times in each source file, and you only need to change it half the time... In other words, if you're capable of using Linux, you're on your own.
Firstly, close your internet browser (though you might want to read this first...). Then, from Edit, Preferences, QuickTime Preferences... with the player open, or by clicking the QuickTime icon in the Control Panel, take a look at the QuickTime Settings window. In the Browser Plug-in section, click the MIME Settings... button and uncheck the file types you don't want QuickTime to handle. Some types in particular that you might want to uncheck include "Video for Windows (AVI) file", "WAVE audio file", "MIDI File", "MPEG file", "MP3 audio file", "MP3 playlist file", "BMP image file", "PNG image file", "Flash file", and probably a few more, depending on how many other programs you might have to handle these files. Obviously, uncheck only the ones you don't want QuickTime to handle in the browser (if the plug-in actually works for you at all...). But so far you've only saved the files from the browser plug-in, so OK that dialogue and move on. But before you do that, if you wanted to remove that system tray icon, you can switch that off by unchecking that last option there.
When you're done with that, switch to the File Type Associations section. You might be told that another application has been stealing the associations from QuickTime... If you want to remove the noisier versions of that message, uncheck the Notify me option, and then proceed to the File Types... button. This controls what QuickTime handles outside of the browser, so if you don't want to double-click something and end up with QuickTime, uncheck it here. My suggested list of types to uncheck is pretty much the same as with the MIME Settings section, but note that "GIF image file" and "JPEG image file" are also included under the Misc group, so if you like editing your images you should uncheck those if necessary. And even if not, it's not like web browsers (at least the sort you'd actually use..) couldn't handle those on their own, anyway.
The file association changes should then take place as soon as you click OK, and the browser plug-in changes will be apparent when you next click or view a unQuickTimed media file in your browser. If the browser settings haven't changed, make sure any browser-related programs are closed, reconfirm the changes to the QuickTime settings, and check again. Basically, any changes aren't likely to show up until you've restarted the browser (though you shouldn't need to restart the operating system to invoke any of the changes here). You can now bask in the glory of a QuickTime configuration that's there to help, but doesn't throw itself at you at every opportunity.
And now if you want Windows Media Player to go away so you can open your mp3s in Winamp, you probably have a good idea of the sort of things to look for...
Note: Yes, you can change file associations in Windows manually, but in my experience QuickTime likes to change those back according to it's settings (remember those notifications I mentioned?). Disabling qttask.exe in msconfig (or an even fanicer way...) might well seem to do the trick, but I figure running QuickTime at all would most likely change them back anyway, so I'd suggest you go with the opening suggestion or concede defeat and change the settings within QuickTime.
