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I'm using the free lame encoder with audacity to convert wav to mp3. Setting at 256 sounds decent going below that not so good. 128 would be a smaller file size - any tips on making it sound better at 128 converting from a BB or RB master wave file or does that size only work for pro mastered music? I apologize for being so clueless  but I've never been into mp3 other than listening before and was fairly stunned at how crappy my stuff sounds at 128. Thanks in advance for your help. Sundance
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Considering that 90% information is missing, it's not too hard to understand why music sounds so bad.
Personally, I usually use 320kbs if I want a half way decent sound for upload. Yeah, the file sizes are bigger, but the sound is better.
Provided you're happy with the wave files, and you're happy at 256, don't compress more than 256.
Gary
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!
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Sundance,
CD quality is 128 kB/s and 44100 Hz. This means that 128 can sound good. I don't have a great deal of experience in Audacity but in Goldwave I convert all WAVs to 128/44100 and it sounds fine. Have you double-checked that the 44100 Hz is set as well as the 128? (From what I understand of Audacity, 44100 is set under "Set Rate" - found under the little arrow to the right of the file name.
Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2025
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I don't know about the audicity settings, since I don't use it in fact. But fact is that the settings as described above is 44.1k for the samplefrequency and the bitrate at 16. Eventhough 22.05k can sometimes still sound acceptable, but you cut off higher frequencies a lot. A 44.1k will contain information upto 22 khz, while a 22 kHz samplerate will not go beyond 11 kHz frequencies. A stereomix will most likely exceed the 11kHz by far.
To give an indication: the old cassetete decks often recorded not much more than approx 15-16 kHz. Most (older) adults also won't go much beyond that... Which means that you would miss out a lot sampling at 22k. A 32kHz samplerate (16kHz response) might therefore be still the limit for acceptable quality.
I'll be back...
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Noel, CD quality is certainly NOT 128 kbps. That's 128 kilobits per second. CDs are roughly 10 MegaBYTES per minute. Considering that a BYTE is 8 bits, that makes CD quality 80 Megabits per minute. There's 60 seconds in a minute, so dividing 80 Mbpm by 60 gives 1.33 Megabits per second.
WAY more data density than 128 kpbs. A thousand times more data. That's why .mp3 files are so much smaller than their .wav counterparts, which at 16 bit data width and 44100 Hz sample rate ARE CD quality.
.mp3, ogg vorbis, WMA, and any of the other audio data compression schemes use various algorithms and decisions in those algorithms to decide how much of the data to 'throw away' in the compression scheme. One thing .mp3 compression does across the board is simply eliminate all data above 14 kHz. No matter what bit rate is used.
I will agree with you that with some music, and some .mp3 compression, and dependent on the data playback, you can get decent sounding 128 kbps mp3 files. But it is highly dependent on the program material used, compression scheme used, playback system, etc.
For my personal CD collection for playback in my car, I have chosen to use 192 kpbs compression with .mp3 files. I find that I really can't tell the difference between these files and CDs of the same material played back in the car. With 128 kbps files, I can usually hear artifacts of the compression on sibilant vocal sounds, and the high-frequency parts of ride cymbals, crash cymbals, etc.
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Thanks rockstar_not, I appreciate the math help  I see it's a subject that you are very passionate about. I also see that I have (con)fused my understanding of WAV, RAW and mp3 formats and have combined them into some form of hybrid, erroneous idea. I appreciate being set on the right path. If you are interested, this html link supports your choice of 192 kbps. The author reaches his conclusion through some qualitative and quantitative analyses. It's interesting reading.
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*Did you also download and install the LAME encoder that is on the Audacity website?
If you are trying to use one of the codecs that came installed with your OS, it cannot sound as good as LAME now does.
Fraunhofer haulted development long ago, LAME kept going...
--Mac
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Thank you all. I'm wanting to upload some songs to somewhere - soundclick, myspace, motagator - haven't decided which host yet. 256 sounds fine - I just wanted to be sure there wasn't some way to do it at 128 that I didn't know about that would sound just as good.
Yes, it's the LAME from the website.
Sundance
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*Many sharing sites may limit your choice to 128kbps mp3 for the sake of webstreaming and limiting storage size.
Check out the rules of the chosen site first.
--Mac
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