BR800 vs mp3's?

[Glenn Mitchell]

I was a bit surprised that the BR 800 doesn't do Mp3's. I'm so used to the Micro BR process.
I'm going to assume folks use some other method and I'm sure there are many?
Thru Sonar (that comes bundled)? Audacity? bounce to MBR, other?

[Geir]

It surprised me too at first, but is really not a big issue. I usually have to trim the beginning (and sometimes the end) of the file anyway and sometimes I "normalize" it if I have mastered it too low. So I use Audacity. I sometimes earlier used the Lame encoder frontend RazorLame to convert to mp3, if no editing is necessary that is a fast way of doing it.

[64Guitars]

The Micro BR is the only BR ever produced that includes MP3 capabilities. So, to those of us who've never owned a Micro BR, the BR-800's lack of MP3 capabilities is neither surprising nor a problem. Like Geir, I always export a wave file, then use Audacity to trim the ends and normalize the level. So, for me, that's the best place to export to MP3. And Audacity offers more bitrates and other options for MP3s than the Micro BR does anyway.

Most DAWs can export to MP3, so you don't necessarily have to use Audacity. Whichever DAW you use for the final steps in creating your finished song (trimming, normalizing, EQ, effects, mixing, etc.) is probably the best place to export to MP3. Since the BR-800 comes with SONAR, you should probably use that. I believe the MP3 encoder in SONAR is only a 30-day trial. But you can use the free LAME encoder with it. If you have Audacity, you probably already have the LAME encoder and SONAR might recognise it already. If it doesn't, you can probably find some help by Googling "sonar lame". I had a quick look and found that all of the pages seemed to refer to SONAR 4, which makes me suspect that it isn't necessary with more recent versions of SONAR and they should recognise LAME if it's already installed.

[Glenn Mitchell]

Thanks.
Once I get more familiar with Sonar I'll probably find out but I am quite familiar with Audacity and it's MP3 exports so I'll probably use it until then.