Getting best quality audio from mp3 and mp4

[Xerlome]

Reply to waxcylinder

Thanks. What CD speed should I set? I have no problem with slow.

[waxcylinder]

Reply to waxcylinder

Thanks. What CD speed should I set? I have no problem with slow.

This is a "how long is a piece of string" question - basically not normally at any of the faster speeds. I have no problem with slow either, I just go and make a cuppa, I want them good not quick.

WC

[steve]

But, be aware that you can sometimes get transcription errors if you burn the CD at a very fast rate (and some CD burner softwares default to high rates).

This is often hardware related and can vary a lot depending on both the drive and the disk being used.
I had one machine that always worked best at the fastest write speed. That is unusual but it does sometimes happen. Probably the best thing is, over a period of time, to try different write speeds and different CD-R brands to see what works best.

Some CD drives are very fussy about the disk being used and only work reliably with certain brands. Other drives can be tolerant and work with almost any disk provided that the disk is not faulty. I've not noticed any pattern to which drives / CD-R combinations will work well - it's usually a case of testing for yourself to see what works for you.

There used to be a free program available from Nero for testing CD quality. I'm not sure if it is still available.
[Update: yes it's still available. It's called "Nero Disk Speed" and it's available here: http://www.nero.com/enu/downloads/ ]

[JJMMWGDuPree]

Sooo... Can you confirm what I think I already know. I have a recording over an hour long that was recorded at 32k to fit it onto an ancient mp3 player. I now want to extract a track from it because I can't find the original single and I want it for my internet stream.

As I see it, if I copy it into Audacity it will make a perfect .au copy of the already lossy recording. I then extract it and turn it back into an mp3, 32k again unfortunately. I will now have an mp3 that will be squished twice to the point where if it only suffers from the swooshles I'll be really lucky.

Am I right?

This may sound like sacrilege but maybe you should add an option to Audacity that allows editing in the native format especially for this very situation.

[steve]

Am I right?

Yes.

This may sound like sacrilege but maybe you should add an option to Audacity that allows editing in the native format especially for this very situation.

Sadly it's not that easy. Much of Audacity's ability to do cool things with sound depend on the ability to access the actual (not encoded) audio data. There are other programs that are able to do basic editing (such as splitting and trimming tracks and scaling the volume). Try searching Google for "Split MP3" or similar, but watch out for adware that many of those types of program are often bundled with.

[JJMMWGDuPree]

Tell me about it.

I've downloaded seven of them so far. One of them filled the screen with warnings from just about every security program on my computer. Trouble is the first two converted the mp3 into a .wav file, the rest were varying stages of useless (One of them wouldn't even unpack). The best was mp3DirectCut, but it only seems to be half a program, and doesn't have a (Working) fade. I suspect I could maybe have used it if the instruction book made sense, but I don't think English was the programmer's native language.

I think I've wasted enough time on this dead end, it's back to searching for the 45 again...

[kozikowski]

It's not that you can't do it, it's just the options are limited. Other than simple editing in an "MP3-Only" editor, you can export at any of the very high quality, uncompressed formats (WAV, AIFF, etc) and what damage there is will get no worse. You can also export as a nose-bleed high MP3. Exporting at 320 Stereo MP3 will minimize the damage increase and still provide an MP3 smaller than the uncompressed formats.

We're struggling with this problem with another poster. In their case, radio station policy is getting in the way. "We only have provision for show submissions as MP3 or Audio CD. That's it. So if you have a three-hour show, creating CDs for that could be a career move, and, nobody is clear how high a quality MP3 the system will accept before it crashes.

Koz

[Gale Andrews]

Here is a link to recommendable direct MP3 editors: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Lame_ ... tion#lossy .

if you open an MP3 in MP3 Direct Cut, the start and end of the file have a grey square you can drag up and down to adjust the volume envelope. So if you want a 2 seconds fade in for example, you drag the grey square at the start down to the gain required (such as -6 dB gain reduction) then click at 2 seconds then Edit > Create simple fade. There will now be another grey square you can leave at 0 dB gain or whatever gain you want.


Gale

[waxcylinder]

I think I've wasted enough time on this dead end, it's back to searching for the 45 again...

What's the 45?

If I've got it, then you're welcome to an uncompressed WAV of the single?

WC

[JJMMWGDuPree]

As a Mancunian you might be one of the few people that does have a copy. I got mine from a guy in Stockport who got them from the Liverpool docks. The old ballast boogie!

It's Betty Scott and the Delvettes, Good Feeling.