Audacity Forum

When I record my wav file the audio level is set normally. When I use Audio Converter to make my MP3 it is full of red lines indicating overdrive. Just wondering if there is a problem why my signal is being overdriven. There seems to be no way of lowering the gain in the Audio Converter. I have to go back and lower the wave signal which doesn't appear to be the right way to do this. It appears the only way around this is to make sure the wav file is a lot lower than what I have been recording. I have a lot of old 33rpm records that I am trying to get on mp3 and it would be nice if I can eliminate going back a step to lower the gain every time I set the wav signal too high for the conversion to MP3

Converting to MP3 format is inexact, so it is common that if some peaks in the audio are very close to 0 dB, then after encoding to MP3 format some of the peaks may be clipped. To avoid this clipping from occurring it is best to Amplify the audio to just below 0 dB before exporting. -1 dB should leave plenty of headroom to avoid clipping after converting to MP3.

If you install Lame for Audacity you can export directly from Audacity in MP3 format without the need to convert with a different program (though it may be a good idea to also keep a WAV format backup copy). http://audacityteam.org/help/faq?s=install&i=lame-mp3

Any way you can lower the recording in the first place? If you're that close to overload that MP3 conversion causes problems, you're probably making the original recordings too loud.

I know everyone thinks they need to be as loud as possible to compete with commercial recordings, but we're talking about acoustically invisible changes.

Koz