MP3 compression??

[bkersh]

Maybe someone can help me with taking numerous sound (not music - just speaking/45 minute to 2 hour) recordings (mp3 format) and compress them in order to send them via email.
Is it possible? Does Audacity do this? And is it difficult?

[steve]

Yes it's possible, and not too difficult.

For Exporting in MP3 format from Audacity you need to install the LAME encoder.
It is important that you use the correct version of Lame, especially with Audacity 1.3
Full details here: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... stallation

Also, see here for some easy guidelines for using Audacity 1.2
http://audacityteam.org/manual-1.2/tutorials.html

[bkersh]

Steve - thanks. I realize this may be a dumb follow up question but does this encoder change the actual format from MP3 to something else? And if so what format is ideal and is the smallest size to send via email?

[steve]

Audacity works with uncompressed audio data (like WAV files) which are BIG.
Lame allows Audacity to compress the data so that the file is much smaller, but with some loss of sound quality. The more you shrink the file size, the lower the sound quality goes.