Best free app to compress mp3 files?

peckerhead

Howdy all,

I have a couple of dozen mp3 files consisting of voice recordings which I need to compress fairly dramatically so they can be uploaded to a Wordpress site, i.e. down to <2Mb each (the originals range between 28Mb/35Mb for roughly twenty minutes in length). I've tried MP3 Quality Modifier at CBR16kbps/8000Hz (mono), and it (just about) gets most of them under 2Mb, but the results sound like they're talking through a toilet cistern, far, far away. I know some loss of quality is inevitable but I'm pretty sure I've heard/downloaded better than this.

Can anyone suggest an alternative? I was thinking mp3 would be the simplest format to output to, but I'm open to other suggestions.

TIA

chin_grin

Could you not just split the files in an audio editor?

The likes of Audacity or this will do.

http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html

peckerhead

Cheers, chin_grin. I was hoping to avoid splitting them, for the sake of simplicity, but I may have to. Is <2Mb unrealistic for a 20-minute voice recording, d'you reckon?

I'm aware that mp3 compression algorithms are fairly "old technology" and that other formats achieve a better filesize/quality compromise. Would something like .m4a/.mp4 be better? (that would also keep the iBandits happy...) And if so, what converter?

Voodu Child

If you are stuck with MP3, LAME is the best MP3 encoder, and you certainly don't want to use CBR.

At 16Kb/s mono, just about any codec is going to sound pretty poor. But AAC-HE with SBR will sound significantly better than MP3. Again, you don't want to use CBR.

Also using such a low sample rate is counter productive, even for super-low bitrate I would use 16KHz min.

TanG411

To get less than 2Mb is definitely a challenge.

I went onto this website here:

http://audio.online-convert.com/convert-to-mp3

I uploaded a 6.3Mb song. I changed the bitrate to 8kbps and used a mono audio channel.

It compressed the song to 637Kb, but the quality is very terrible. I don't think it's worth it.

Splitting them would be your best option.

peckerhead

Cheers lads. Am now messing around with the FFmpeg Audacity plugin, I'll see what that yields...

Voodu Child

peckerhead wrote: »

Cheers lads. Am now messing around with the FFmpeg Audacity plugin, I'll see what that yields...

You want to use LAME for MP3 or Nero for AAC. Anything else is a waste of time at such low bitrates.

BostonB

The first problem you have is you are transcoding. Compressing something thats already compressed. you'll get better results compressing from the original uncompressed source file.

The second is the limitation of the host. Can you not split them or link to them and put them somewhere else?

peckerhead

BostonB wrote: »

Can you not [...] link to them and put them somewhere else?

Ah...

Cool, thanks!

Khannie

I think for low quality voice, ogg vorbis is your man (apple devices wont play it back, but more or less anything else will). There are lots of free tools for doing it. I'd be interested in hearing how you fare if you decide to give it a lash.

Gyck

Have you looked at converting them to speex? http://www.speex.org/