Any advice on shrinking mp3?

[kenny mac]

Hi there ,I don't know if I'm jus getting more adventurist but my files ssem to be too big for posting on the site recently.
can anyone recommend a good free site for windows.
Ive seen a few but would rather follow a link that you guys had tried and tested
Any input welcome.

[Farrell Jackson]

Hi Kenny,

I use Audacity to convert my wav files to mp3 and to shrink large mp3 files to smaller ones. It's free and easy to use. You can choose any mp3 quality you want that gets you under SC's maximum 7341 kb size.

Farrell

[pjd1]

I use Audacity as well free download then follow the instructions .

[kenny mac]

what are the best settings for this,and can anyone run me through it?

[64Guitars]

can anyone recommend a good free site for windows.
Ive seen a few but would rather follow a link that you guys had tried and tested
Any input welcome.

Not sure if you're looking for a free site with a file conversion utility, or a free site where you can post your large MP3 files. If the latter, I'd suggest alonetone. Several of our members have used it and there's no problem linking our players and jukeboxes to songs hosted on alonetone. As far as I know, they have no restrictions on file size.

To post a song here at Songcrafters which is hosted on alonetone, just right-click on the download link for your song at alonetone and select Copy Link Location from your browser's context menu. Then click the icon above the Songcrafters message editor to insert a pair of [singlemp3][/singlemp3] tags into your message at the current cursor position. Now paste the download link you copied from alonetone between the tags. It should look something like this:

[singlemp3]https://alonetone.com/64guitars/tracks/how-soon-is-now.mp3?referrer=download[/singlemp3]

When you post your message, the standard mp3 player will be displayed like this:

Time:

0:00

Volume:

50

0

 Stop   Play   Pause   Vol   Vol   Mute   Repeat   Download

This particular file is 9.4 MB which is why I put it on alonetone.

[64Guitars]

what are the best settings for this,and can anyone run me through it?

• Load your song into Audacity. For best results, use a WAV file or other high-quality lossless format rather than MP3.
• Trim the ends. You can zoom in on the waveform by selecting the first (or last) 5 to 15 seconds and pressing Ctrl-E to zoom to the selection. You can also zoom my holding the Ctrl key while turning the mouse wheel, or press Ctrl-1 to zoom in and Ctrl-3 to zoom out. Ctrl-2 resets the zoom level to normal. Once you've zoomed in, select the unwanted silence and press the Delete key to remove it.
• Normalize the levels. Select the whole song, or select nothing, then choose Normalize from the Effect menu. Use the following settings and click OK.
  
  
  
  
• From Audacity's File menu, select Export / Export as MP3. The Export Audio dialog window will appear. The top of it is a standard File Save dialog that lets you specify the filename and the folder in which you want to save it. The bottom of the Export Audio dialog looks like this:
  
  
  
  The button at the top-right is a drop-down list of file types. Make sure it's set to "MP3 Files". Set Bit Rate Mode to Constant and Channel Mode to Stereo. You control the file size with the "Quality" drop-down list. Higher bit rates create larger files with better sound quality. Lower bit rates create smaller files but don't sound as good. So start at the highest bit rate (320 kbps) and click the Save button. Then look at the file it created to see what the file size is. If it's too big, try the next bit rate (256 kbps) and check the file size. Keep trying lower bit rates until you've created a file that's small enough for posting. Anything down to 192 kbps will sound pretty good. Below that, the sound quality suffers a bit. If you find all this experimentation too much trouble, then I'd suggest always using 192 kbps. It should work just fine 90% of the time. If it's occasionally still too big, then you can try a lower bit rate. But at that point, you might be better off hosting a higher quality file on alonetone instead.
  

[64Guitars]

I forgot to mention this important tip.

Go to the Import / Export page of Audacity's Preferences and make sure there's a checkmark beside "Show Metadata Tags editor before export".



Now, when you export your MP3 file, it will also show the following dialog to let you enter tag data about your song such as the song title, your name, and the year.



You should always fill-in at least the song title and your name, as this info is displayed by our mp3 player. If you don't fill it in, then the player will display the filename instead, which often isn't a suitable song title ("TR0708.mp3", for example). By setting the preference as shown above, you'll never forget to add the metatags because Audacity will always display the Edit Metadata Tags dialog for you to fill in.

[Mach]

I haven't tried Audacity, but I've tried several different encoders that use the Frunhoffer codec. I find them to be OK, but I always go back to the stand alone LAME encoder. I haven't found a better one for Variable Bit Rate (VBR). Plus it decodes mp3's with no evident digital artifacts as far as I can tell.

Mach

[64Guitars]

I haven't tried Audacity, but I've tried several different encoders that use the Frunhoffer codec. I find them to be OK, but I always go back to the stand alone LAME encoder. I haven't found a better one for Variable Bit Rate (VBR). Plus it decodes mp3's with no evident digital artifacts as far as I can tell.

Audacity uses LAME for MP3 encoding. For legal reasons, it doesn't come with it, but they recommend it and provide installation instructions for all three major OS platforms (Mac, Linux, and Windows).

http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#lame

[Mike Huntingford]

For years I have been using a suite of programs offered by AVS4YOU ( https://www.avs4you.com ).  I use the audio editor as my final mastering of my two-track masters - it saves in multiple formats.  I have also used the audio and video converters to recode and shrink files (in fact, if you look at any song that I have posted, I will include "small" in the file name - these have been shrunk using this software.  Also, you will have lifetime upgrades and access to ALL of their software.

Mike