Compressing Music Files

[PietroCrespi]

Does anyone know of a free (and legal) program that will let me make a song file smaller without affecting the quality majorly?

[wammy_bar]

i dont know of any programs, try googleing it, are u using mp3? if not then get sumthing to encode mp3's, in fact u can do it with itunes. but if you use mp3 then look at making the bitrate smaller.

[Seafroggys]

you lose quality with MP3. Use lossless formats such as OGG.

[PietroCrespi]

i dont know of any programs, try googleing it, are u using mp3? if not then get sumthing to encode mp3's, in fact u can do it with itunes. but if you use mp3 then look at making the bitrate smaller.

How would I go about doing that?

you lose quality with MP3. Use lossless formats such as OGG.

I've seen OGG before, but are they compatible with most things people use? Mp3 players? Windows Media? Itunes?

[Seafroggys]

It works in Winamp. You'll have to read the MP3 player's manual if it supports such file formats.

[Moseph]

you lose quality with MP3. Use lossless formats such as OGG.

Ogg Vorbis is a lossy format, not lossless.

The most popular lossless formats are .wav and .aiff (which are completely uncompressed), but other formats are sometimes used to transmit a lossless compressed format.

FLAC, Monkey's Audio, .SHN, and OptimFROG are all lossless formats. However, none are even remotely as popular as lossy formats (this is because they must have much larger file sizes to retain all the data).

FLAC is probably the most popular, followed by .SHN. For the most part, media players are not guaranteed to play most formats. Most media players will natively play .wav, .aiff, .mp3 and possibly .ogg

[Aes820]

.mp3 would probably be your best bet.
Just choose a bit rate to reach the best compromose between quality and file size.

128kbps seems to do the job for most full range audio, without introducing too much anti aliasing.

[Moseph]

It just occurred to me that I didn't answer the original question.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com

Click on "Music Converter"

You can then download and install whatever codecs you desire at "Codec Central"

There's also this handy online reference section

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/spoons-audio-guide.htm

Which talks about more than just file formats, but for the most part is focused on listening not recording, so in my opinion it's largely things that are nice to know but misguided for my purposes.

[xamas]

Does anyone know of a free (and legal) program that will let me make a song file smaller without affecting the quality majorly?


Using any audio editing and converting software,suggest FlexiMusic Wave Editor. using "Save As" command convert and save the audio file to either as wav or Mp3 file. While using this command, it will ask for change in bit rate where you can change the bit rate of your choice so as to compress the files. MP3 files are highly compressed, Whatever may be the conversions (either Mp3 to wav or wav to Mp3) and at each time of conversion there is sure a small quality lose. It is better to save the master audio file in normal audio format (*.Wav) and use that for editing. Easy to use, downloadable, free to use as trail version.
http://www.fleximusic.com/waveditor/overview.htm

[Moseph]

Does anyone know of a free (and legal) program that will let me make a song file smaller without affecting the quality majorly?


Using any audio editing and converting software,suggest FlexiMusic Wave Editor. using "Save As" command convert and save the audio file to either as wav or Mp3 file. While using this command, it will ask for change in bit rate where you can change the bit rate of your choice so as to compress the files. MP3 files are highly compressed, Whatever may be the conversions (either Mp3 to wav or wav to Mp3) and at each time of conversion there is sure a small quality lose. It is better to save the master audio file in normal audio format (*.Wav) and use that for editing. Easy to use, downloadable, free to use as trail version.
http://www.fleximusic.com/waveditor/overview.htm

Could a mod/admin please ban this IP? Every single post from this user is an advertisement for this software. Does anybody else find such a blatant plant as annoying as I do?

[Aes820]

I can't ban IPs. But he's banned now anyway.

[scheid]

I haven't explored mp4's that much, but those may be better quality for a given bitrate than mp3's. If you Google 'wav to m4a', you'll get a bunch of results for encoders. (m4a is a common file extension for mp4 encoded audio files)

I just know that iTunes uses m4a's almost exclusively now. I think iTunes will actually let you convert a wav to m4a (or it calls it 'aac') What I buy on iTunes is at a bitrate of 128K and it seems to sound better than 128K encoded mp3 files.

[scheid]

I forgot: If you want to venture further into computer geekland, then here is an interesting article that compares a few different mp3 encoders at various bit rates: http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/1q00/mp3/mp3-1.html . Bottom line seems to be keep the bit rate at or above 192 and you should be in decent shape. I do all of my mp3's at 256K, but that's me. Even at that high of a bitrate, a 45MB wav file becomes an 8MB mp3; not too bad.

[ChordsofLife]

What type of file are you starting with? A WAV file?

I find dBPowerAmp to be the best, but mWk Audio Converter is really simple to use. dB tends to use a tid bit more resources.