What is best method to create mp3 on Mac?

darkmelody · Post by **darkmelody** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 2:01 am

the annoying thing with itunes is that the newest version doesn't seem to give you options to set bitrate and just defaults to 192....

anamexis · Post by **anamexis** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 2:06 am

darkmelody wrote:the annoying thing with itunes is that the newest version doesn't seem to give you options to set bitrate and just defaults to 192....

Preferences > General > Import Settings

jonny72 · Post by **jonny72** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:04 am

anamexis wrote:
darkmelody wrote:the annoying thing with itunes is that the newest version doesn't seem to give you options to set bitrate and just defaults to 192....
Preferences > General > Import Settings

They added some new conversion options in the menu's, I guess to make it easier for casual users to create versions for iPod's and the like. But the import settings are still used for conversions if you use the main menu options.

Kristijonas · Post by **Kristijonas** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 8:57 pm

A few years ago I was interested in MP3 codecs alot and I found some tests done that Fraunhofer codec is better on lower bitrates (<192 kbps), but on higher bitrates (>192 kbps) Lame is winner. iTunes uses Fraunhofer, so use it for ~128 kbps. For 192 and more, use MAX, or similar app. Of course, I don't think iTunes codec is set to "Hi-Q", to make it faster, but as I noticed, if compare two files 128 kbps - iTunes (with Fraunhofercodec) converted has a little narowed stereo base, while MAX (with Lame codec) stereo base was closer to original, but sounded not so good. So, I prefer iTunes if I need to convert around 128, but if more, I use MAX: http://sbooth.org/Max/

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:07 am

With disk space and bandwidth being cheap these days, I am curious why mp3s even matter anymore.

I mean, I have been thinking a lot of FLAC/ALAC versus MP3 blah blah but really, why not just give away WAV/AIF? Most any mp3 player also plays WAV/AIF.

Better quality, and if diskpace/bandwidth is not an issue for most people anymore, why bother with with lossy compressed files anyway?

swishniak · Post by **swishniak** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 1:21 pm

ive had trouble with itunes - some apps that require mp3s for film/flash/games cannot read itunes conversion. apparently there is some extra info that is written into the resulting file (with some apple/big brother info about who/when/where) which makes the mp3 incompatible to certain programs.

jonny72 · Post by **jonny72** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 1:32 pm

tempus3r wrote:With disk space and bandwidth being cheap these days, I am curious why mp3s even matter anymore.

I mean, I have been thinking a lot of FLAC/ALAC versus MP3 blah blah but really, why not just give away WAV/AIF? Most any mp3 player also plays WAV/AIF.

Better quality, and if diskpace/bandwidth is not an issue for most people anymore, why bother with with lossy compressed files anyway?

Disk space and bandwidth are still major issues for a lot of people.

From a user point of view, large libraries in a lossless format just aren't practical (mine is currently about 2Tb spread across 4 external drives) and a lot of media players aren't anywhere near big enough to hold a reasonable number of songs in a lossless format.

From a retailer point of view, offering their entire catalog of downloads in a lossless format would require a massive amount of disk space and would require an equally massive investment in hosting costs and whilst bandwidth costs are coming down all the time they will still add to costs.

More and more retailers are offering lossless but it will be some time before they all do.

synnack · Post by **synnack** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 2:19 pm

jonny72 wrote:
tempus3r wrote:With disk space and bandwidth being cheap these days, I am curious why mp3s even matter anymore.

I mean, I have been thinking a lot of FLAC/ALAC versus MP3 blah blah but really, why not just give away WAV/AIF? Most any mp3 player also plays WAV/AIF.

Better quality, and if diskpace/bandwidth is not an issue for most people anymore, why bother with with lossy compressed files anyway?
Disk space and bandwidth are still major issues for a lot of people.

From a user point of view, large libraries in a lossless format just aren't practical (mine is currently about 2Tb spread across 4 external drives) and a lot of media players aren't anywhere near big enough to hold a reasonable number of songs in a lossless format.

From a retailer point of view, offering their entire catalog of downloads in a lossless format would require a massive amount of disk space and would require an equally massive investment in hosting costs and whilst bandwidth costs are coming down all the time they will still add to costs.

More and more retailers are offering lossless but it will be some time before they all do.

Well, on the large library point of view, you could just encode it to whatever size you wanted then delete the WAV file. The point is it would be up to you how much size you wanted to take up versus quality of the song. Your choice, rather than buying a set size.

On the bandwidth front, I know of several hosting companies that already do unlimited bandwitdth and disk space for 10 bucks a month...

mrsakitumi · Post by **mrsakitumi** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:54 pm

I drop into Logic8 and render as mp3

jonny72 · Post by **jonny72** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:31 pm

tempus3r wrote:On the bandwidth front, I know of several hosting companies that already do unlimited bandwitdth and disk space for 10 bucks a month...

Are you for real? You actually believe they would give you unlimited bandwidth and disk space without there being some catches? Most likely that there is a limit to unlimited and that performance is non existent.

Have a look at what decent, quality hosts charge for high volume websites to get a better idea of what the costs involved are.

Walkingmachine · Post by **Walkingmachine** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:47 pm

anyone know an Mp3 converter that can do 320 kbps.....im not an expert, but i'm assuming it might make a difference on large systems....what should the quality of your wav be when converting to 320??

thanks

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:07 pm

iTunes rocks, it's the most integrated audio player there is.

pretty much any audio / DAW apps supports direct drag and drop from a iTunes playlist like Live, Traktor, etc., or import iTuners playlists , or export directly into one, like Peak.

also, it's fully SCRIPTABLE and therefor you can make it do pretty much anything you ever can wish for... if you are not good at scripting just choose from the hundreds here* what you need, i could not live without several of the scripts i found there, they are 100% taylored to my needs.

* http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/

it's PERFECT for organising HUGE libraries and mass tagging... the list goes on and on...

and ohhh... i used to hate it myself, because i did not understood it!!!

once you develope away from the user errors, it's freakin' fantastic.

and it should be anyones job automatically to go always into preferences, no matter what apps you are using and to customise / switch off all the rubbish, i don't know any apps that does not do by default unwanted stuff.

my2cents, it's the best audiofile player there is!

one more thing about integration... you can for example drop a traktor history file into an iTunes playlist and you get all the played tracks in the right order created as an iTunes playlist. WICKED!

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:09 pm

Walkingmachine wrote:anyone know an Mp3 converter that can do 320 kbps.....im not an expert, but i'm assuming it might make a difference on large systems....what should the quality of your wav be when converting to 320??

thanks

any converter should do, i don't know any that doesn't.

if you want really good quality and still use a compressed format use 320kbs AAC files. by far superior to mp3s.

stonee · Post by **stonee** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 9:33 pm

again, i'd like to state that sound quality and mp3 are 2 things that do not go together.
if you are worried about sound quality in an mp3, you are being a dink. use a non lossy codec.
for MP3's, go with whats best for your workflow. itunes is a pretty quick and easy method.