Re-encoding multiple mp3's to a lower bitrate

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hi, I’m new to using Audacity, and I heard it was a good program for re-encoding MP3 files to a lower bitrate (for my wifes small mp3 player, need to save space).

I have alot of mp3 files currently encoded at 320kbps, which I’d like to re-encode at 128kbps, as she can’t hear the difference. I have LAME installed, and I understand how to import and export at a lower rate. My problem is, I can only do it one song at a time, and I have about 200 songs I want to convert. I’m not sure how to import/export multiple files at once.

Let’s say I have 15 songs (cd rip). I Import and select them all, and it opens up each file seperately. Then, I can go to one file, export it with a lower bitrate and save successfully, then close it and move on to the next one. Is there a way to do batch processing, ie select all 15 songs and tell it once to export/save all 15 instead of doing them individually?

Thanks for your help!

2

Audacity has a “batch” process called Chains about which I know very little except I think it’s right down your alley.

This is what it says in the instructions.

http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/batch_processing.html

A note about MP3. MP3 is a destructive process. It gets its small files by throwing away quality, which is cool and good if you do it once. If you MP3 an MP3, the damage doubles. So even if you stay at the same compression level and just make a simple correction to the show, the new show will be twice as gargly, bubbling and honky as the old one. For situations like this, we recommend one of the stand-alone MP3 editors like mp3splt which doesn’t try to change the compression.

You will probably be OK because you’re starting with a very, very good quality MP3 and stepping down to a “good” quality, but do the conversion to a couple of songs and make sure you can’t hear any obvious damage.

You might try converting to mono and you’ll be able to get by with even smaller files with little or no loss in enjoyment.

Koz

3

Ok I found my mistake. I was selecting ‘Export’… I didn’t even see there was ‘Export Multiple’… DOH!!

Thanks everyone :smiley: