Reducing bitrate of MP3 FILES

Colonel Kurtz

I downloaded some mp3 music files recently and they have a bitrate of 320 kb. This seems unusually high for files I only wanted for mp3 player use. The files are quite large because of that, each song around 12-15MB, and will take up far too much space on my player.
Considering 128 or 192 are usually the standard bitrate for mp3 use, I'm looking for some software that will allow me to reduce the files to that bitrate.

Does anyone know where I could get some software to do this?

I found a few already while searching online, but they automatically reduce the bitrate to 64kbps, and I'm guessing that might be too much, and will distort the file quality very noticeably.

beazee

Google first hit:
http://download.cnet.com/MP3-Bitrate-Changer/3000-2140_4-10950815.html

Colonel Kurtz

Hey, thanks for the reply.
Yes, I saw that one myself, but some of the comments on this are not good. Apparantly it introduces spyware on your PC!
Have you ever used it?

beazee

Haven't used myself.

Generally trust cnet downloads myself, have good antivirus, choose manual instalation (where available) and carefully confirm each step of installation - works for me good several years so far

Kensington

dBpoweramp - it's not free (US$38) but you get a 30-day trial which includes MP3 encoding if you had only a few files to transcode.

Colonel Kurtz

Thanks for the advice guys. Will check one of these out.
Appreciate it.

bonzodog2

Get Audacity and the lame_enc.dll encoder for mp3 encoding

CaSCaDe711

Check this software out, FormatFactory

Very good for converting a single file, or a batch of files, audio and video.
Be sure to adjust the Output settings, on mp3 they are 128kbps at default.

CaSCaDe711

unkel

Would you not either replace the music on your mp3 player more often or upgrade the memory (or the player)...

...and keep the 320 bit mp3 files?

128 bit is pretty brutal soundwise, although I admit I do not use mp3 players...