Welcome to Testament: The Ultimate Unreleased MP3 Collection. Please read the following information so you can enjoy all the features of this CD.
This collection consists of unreleased Prince songs, alternate versions of officially released Prince songs, and Prince's unreleased versions of songs he gave other artists. Also included are unreleased songs by artists associated with Prince that may or may not have included his input. The songs are divided into categories based on the year (or estimated year) the song was recorded in the studio, and are listed in chronological order by recording date whenever possible. All songs included on this CD are unreleased studio recordings unless noted otherwise. There are some "bonus tracks" on the CD that are from rehearsals or live concerts. In most cases, studio versions of these songs do not exist or are not circulating. Prince sings lead vocals on all songs unless noted otherwise. Songs with the title "Instrumental" are unreleased instrumentals with unknown titles.
The CD consists of MP3 audio files of unreleased songs and an HTML interface that organizes all the files which you can view with your web browser. There is no "installation" required. To view the CD through the HTML interface, double click the file titled "start.htm" in the CD's root directory. Your default web browser should automatically launch and you can proceed from there. If your browser does not open, you can open the file manually from within your browser.
To play all the tracks on the CD, click on the 
icon near the top of the page, and your MP3 player should automatically launch and load an MP3 playlist of the songs in order. There is also a icon under each era's heading, which you can click to load a playlist of just the songs from that category. You can also choose to play a specific song by simply clicking on the song title on the page.
If for some reason your MP3 player does not automatically launch from within the HTML interface, you can manually play the songs from within the "1985-1989" folder. Inside this directory is a playlist which will load all the tracks from the CD into your MP3 player, and individual folders for each group of years. Each of the folders contain a playlist file which will allow you to load just the songs from that group. The playlist file names all end with the extension ".m3u".
Occasionally you will find a 
icon after a song's description. If you click it, it will display an image of the unreleased artwork for an unreleased single, or a similar item that is relevant to that song.
All songs were recorded in the MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) audio format. They are all sampled at 128 kBit/second. The sound quality of the source material varies, with many of the songs sounding excellent, while a few tracks unfortunately suffer from less than desirable sound quality. However, most of the songs in this collection are presented in the best sound quality currently available and circulating among collectors. Since the songs come from a variety of sources, the recording levels vary, so you may have to adjust the volume accordingly. These songs can be played on almost any computer with a CD-ROM drive that also has MP3 playback capabilities.
You can find MP3 players for both Windows and Macintosh computers on the Internet.
Windows: The latest version of Winamp can be downloaded from:
www.winamp.com
Macintosh: The latest version of Macamp can be downloaded from:
www.macamp.com
First and foremost, you must have a computer capable of playing MP3 files. This CD has been designed and tested for use on systems using Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and up, and Winamp v2.22. Although the CD should work on other systems with different configurations, there is no guarantee of complete compatibility.
For the HTML interface and the MP3 playlists to function properly, your computer's operating system (OS) must support long filenames. For example, a file named "Instrumental.mp3" may be shortened and renamed "Instru~1.mp3" on a computer that does not support long filenames. In this situation, the HTML interface and playlists are designed to recognize the longer name, and would not load the file. If this occurs, you would not be able to use the playlists, and would have to load up each song individually from its respective folder. Macintosh OS 8.6 and later can read Windows long filenames up to 30 characters in length. What this means is that the earlier versions of the Macintosh OS will have problems loading many files from within the HTML interface of this CD. Macintosh computers with OS 8.6 or later will have very few problems since the vast majority of filenames on this CD are less than 30 characters in length.
When you choose to play an MP3 file or MP3 playlist from within Microsoft Internet Explorer, an alert box may appear that says "you have chosen to download a file from this location" and you will be given two options. If you choose to "open this file from its current location" your MP3 player should launch and play the file from the CD (which is what you probably want to do). If you choose to "save this file to disk" it will attempt to save the file from the CD to your hard drive (which is what you probably do not want to do).
If you are a Windows user and downloaded the NPG Player from the NPG Music Club in February or March 2001, the HTML interface may not operate as intended. If you downloaded and installed the QuickTime 5 Public Preview required by the NPG Player, its default settings automatically plays any MP3 files in QuickTime. If you have this plugin installed and you click on a song title in the HTML interface, a new page will load up and play that song from within your web browser (and you can't look at any of the song descriptions while the MP3 is playing). To disable this feature, go to "Windows Control Panel," select "QuickTime," select the "About QuickTime" pull-down and choose "Browser Plug-in." Then click the "Mime Settings" button. In this window, it lists all the types of files you wish QuickTime to handle. There are two boxes to the left of each file type. Click the second box beside "MP3" (which will de-select it and remove the "X" from the box). Click the "OK" button to save the settings. Afterwards, when you click on a song title in the HTML interface, your default MP3 player should load and you can continue to look at the song descriptions while the track is playing.
Sometimes you may encounter an error message if you insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive and attempt to play an MP3 file from within the HTML interface. You may get a message that says the the file cannot be found, and you'll be prompted to "make sure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available." If this happens, you simply need to reboot your computer with the CD in your CD-ROM drive.
