Hello everyone, I’ve recorded some old tapes into audacity and now I would like to export the wave files and send them to cloud storage, my Google drive is full so I need another one, so I can listen to them on my cellphone. I’ve watched some tutorials but didn’t see this issue specifically. Is the sound quality that bad when exporting ? Because I have quite a few to export and I know mp3 files take up very little space. Any tips would be great. Thanks
Exporting as WAV doesn’t hurt sound quality. (1)
WAV is lossless. FLAC is lossless compression. The files are almost half the size of WAVs with no loss of quality. (2) Plus, “tagging” (embedded title/artist/album/artwork) is not well supported for WAV. The audio player app on your phone can probably play FLACs.
MP3 is lossy compression. Data is thrown-away to make a smaller file. But MP3 is “smart” and it tries to throw-away information that you can’t hear anyway. At higher bitrates (less compression) it often sounds identical to the uncompressed original. It’s almost certainly better than your “old tapes”. 
It’s generally better than any consumer analog format.
Some people keep a lossless archive and then use MP3 copies for everyday or “portable” files. (3)
Another option is AAC (AKA MP4 or M4A). It’s also lossy but it’s slightly newer than MP3 and it’s supposed to be better.
In order to export as AAC you’ll need to install FFmpeg. But your phone should have no trouble playing it.
(1) There is something “odd” that can happen when exporting to WAV (and most other formats). If you do something like boosting the bass or over-boosting the volume, your peaks can go over 0dB which is the “digital maximum”. Audacity itself doesn’t have any limits but if your audio goes over 0dB the WAV will clip (distort) so it can sound worse than what you’re hearing in Audacity.
(2) Audacity doesn’t support embedded artwork but you can add it with MP3Tag (which also works with WAV and other formats, not just MP3s).
(3) You should also avoid re-editing MP3. When you open an MP3 in Audacity (or any “regular” audio editor) it gets decompressed. If you then re-export as MP3 it goes through another generation of lossy compression and some damage accumulates.
Hi, thank you for clearing things up for me , and giving me insight on what I have to do. Although it’s going to take some experimenting on my part to see how things work, I think for now I will start out with the mp3 files and mp4, but with the MP4 you mentioned I would have to download ffmpeg ? Will I have to download that on my phone or on audacity ? The reason why I’m choosing mp3s and Mp4s is because the wave files take up a lot more space and I’m definitely going to have a lot of tapes to export. Also I have to find a good cloud storage that’s free because my Google drive is currently full. I’m still a little confused with certain things but maybe things will clear up as I go along.
Thank you so much !!
That’s for Audacity. Sometimes the instructions can be confusing but just download and RUN FFmpeg_5.0.0_for_Audacity_on_Windows_x86_64.exe and you’ll be ready-to-go.
It’s built-in to most audio-player apps and if you have an iPhone it’s a “standard format” for Apple.
Audacity and FFmpeg are both free open source but there are some “questionable” licensing issues with FFmpeg so Audacity has always played it safe and not built it in…
That’s the whole purpose of compression… File size and transmission bandwidth! I’ve got about 18,000 MP3s on my antique IPod Classic that’s “permanently” connected to my car stereo.
A good quality MP3 (or MP4) is about 1/5the the size of uncompressed CD audio (or smaller).
P.S.
When you export as MP4 the option shows-up as: “M4A (AAC) Files (FFmpeg)”
Thank you for clearing that up for me. I’ve just installed MEGA app for storage, hopefully I can try things out tomorrow. Thanks !
If your phone is the main device you will be listening to the audio files on, consider buying a micro SD card, putting the files on it, then putting it in your phone and using something like VLC to listen to them instead of using cloud storage.
Oh definitely, I just installed a brand new SD card last week. I’m not familiar with VLC so I’ll do some research on it, but I’ve just installed MEGA on my phone, is this not good ? Thanks
I’m not familiar with MAGA but it should be OK. Of course the streaming connection can get interrupted so at times you might get interruptions/glitches and if you have a limited data plan you’re using “data” when you upload and when you play. (Probably NOT a LOT of data with a limited amount of compressed audio.)
If you’re going to stream from the cloud/internet you can also get a FREE Spotify account. There’s a good chance that they have the music from your tapes (I assume they’re music tapes ) and the sound quality should be better than analog tape! Like most streaming, they use lossy compression but the sound quality is still very good.
You may already have an audio player application on your phone. Or there are several popular audio player apps, depending on if you have an iPhone or Android.
VLC Player is FREE and open source. (It’s legit and there are no ads or anything undesirable). I don’t normally play music on my computer but I use VLC on my computer for playing DVDs and “DVD formatted” audio/video files. (I’m still using Winamp for audio on my windows computer.)
I hear you, actually I already have a Spotify account, but actually the whole purpose of doing this is so I can have the original tapes the I recorded them as a kid which can never be replaced, such as mix tapes, recordings from the radio, and a lot of underground music that platforms like Spotify, Amazon music, Pandora etc. don’t even have. So, I’m really trying to find some type of storage platform that will be stable and fit a lot of music on. If VLC is more geared for what I’m looking to do, then I’ll use that, which I’ve already downloaded on my android phone. Btw, I’m a little confused about what to install where. Do I also have to download VLC to my PC so I can send the tracks there and it shows up on the phone ? Or do I use the micro SD card to transfer from PC to the SD then to the phone ? Sorry, never did this before.
A caution here. All the little tricks that MP3 uses to make its good-sounding, tiny sound files only work once. MP3 actually throws away some of the sound you’re not going to use any more. If you make an MP3 from that MP3, it throws more away and you can’t stop it. If you listen carefully, you may hear some slightly wine-glassy, hollow-tube compression distortion.
That’s why MP3 is an end-product to listen running on the beach, not a step in the middle of production editing. Ideally, you save all the work as perfect quality, uncompressed WAV (Microsoft). When you want to listen while running on the beach, then make the MP3.
You have dug yourself a hole with limited storage.
Koz
Ok should I use MP4 instead ? I don’t want unnecessary issues before I even start. Thanks
MP4 is better for that… MP4 is also lossy compression but “damage” doesn’t accumulate with successive generations of re-encoding. (100 pass re-compression test.)
Or as I mentioned above, you can keep a lossless “master archive” on your computer and play compressed files on your phone. Then you can “safely” re-edit and have the option of re-encoding to any lossless or lossy format in the future. Of course it’s a good idea to keep a backup of that so you never have to re-digitize, and the tapes can deteriorate, etc. (It also “doesn’t hurt” to keep backups of the MP3s or MP4s.)
As an archival format, FLAC is generally better than WAV. The files are about half the size and tagging/metadata is better-supported.
VLC is a player application, not storage.
On your phone… Where you want to play the files.
I have it installed on my computer AND on my Android phone but I mostly use it for video but it also plays audio-only files. (I doesn’t seem to be popular as an audio player.)
You probably already have an audio player on your phone or you can search if VLC doesn’t have the “features” you want. AIMP seems to be popular.
How to copy music to your phone.
P.S.
Player applications use the embedded tags/metadata to find & organize your files. That’s how they find & play a particular album/artist/song/genre, etc. Audacity can add/edit metadata but it has some limitations, including that it doesn’t support album artwork. I use MP3Tag (on the computer). It also works with MP4, FLAC, and all of the popular formats, not just MP3.
That’s definitely a lot of useful of information to have, and I definitely need to save it before audacity closes the topic. there’s also a lot of options , so I narrowed it down a little just to get started. I’ve installed AIMP on my phone, and decided to go with mp4 as my format. Hopefully things will go smoother from here, Thanks 