convert to mp3?

[TurtlePilotAttack]

how come i can only convert to wav or aif files? this makes the track like 10x bigger then it should be and reduces the quality greatly. what do i do?

[Migra]

get Audacity or a wavtomp3 converter

[TurtlePilotAttack]

will this reduce the quality? how come a $300 program doesn't have mp3 export...

[TurtlePilotAttack]

so im expected to carry around a 50mb file? whats the best course of action to maintane the highest possible quality, because it sounds completely different in ableton and the exported file. but i also dont think it makes sense to have a 50mb song...

[TurtlePilotAttack]

when i export it as a wav it sounds embarassingly bad quality. the sounds are completely different than in ableton. can someone please help me? is it better to have higher bit depth? what about the sample rate? because my file keeps coming out completely different

[TurtlePilotAttack]

i dont mean to sound whiny. im just wondering what the best settings are for a decent qualioty track withouth being too large a file.

[TurtlePilotAttack]

well i figured out why it sounded so whack was because i was messing with the bit depth and sample rate and stuff. i just stuck to a 16bit wav and then converted to mp3 for pretty decent results. any tips?

[Migra]

The best setting for a CD quality sound is MP3 @ 192kbps or higher at 44.1khz at 16bit or higher, with this settings your mp3 will be same original WAV audio file sound quality, and it will be like 5x smaller size..... Now you're talking about the rendered WAV sound is not same as in Ableton, try reproducing with a player (i.e. iTunes, Real, WMPlayer, etc) with EQ enabled, unless you want to properly master on Ableton before rendering, like adding FX, EQs, Compressors, Reverbs, Filters, Etc on each channel and maybe a mastering suite like T-Racks http://www.ikmultimedia.com/t-racks/features/ on the Master channel....

[simonlb]

The best setting for a CD quality sound is MP3 @ 192kbps or higher at 44.1khz at 16bit or higher, with this settings your mp3 will be same original WAV audio file sound quality, and it will be like 5x smaller size.....

No it won't be the same sound quality. Once you get as high as 320kbps it starts to get to the point that most people can't tell but 192kbps is definitely not an acceptable subsitute for CD quality. A lot of the audio content is simply missing, if nothing else.

, unless you want to properly master on Ableton before rendering, like adding FX, EQs, Compressors, Reverbs, Filters, Etc on each channel and maybe a mastering suite like T-Racks http://www.ikmultimedia.com/t-racks/features/ on the Master channel....

Adding FX on each channel is not mastering. Mastering is done after rendering; what you're talking about is mixing which the producer should already be doing anyway. As for putting a mastering suite on the master channel, I'll not even go into that

Why would you want to render directly to mp3 anyway? I understand you might want to convert to mp3 (mp3 convertors aren't exactly hard to find btw) but surely you want to render your song as an uncompressed file? Space isn't an issue, this is 2010, we have cheap massive hard drives...