Ableton Forum

Please tell me the best quality tool or method to go from Live 7 to an mp3.

MP3 task is NOT about quality, but about data compression/deletion (does this word exists english speakers?).
This is two different things no?

AudialHub is pretty fantastic in my books, and uses LAME for mp3 encoding, check it out!

My basic question is will an application that uses LAME encoding make my tracks sound less shitty on myspace's streaming player?

probably not appreciably.

but i'm someone who thinks that the uber-anal argument about the quality of a 320 mp3 vs. LAME is just a waste of breath. 99% of the time you aren't listening with an device that'll demonstrate a difference, if there is one. and 99% of that 99% you, the human, can't tell anyway.

drush wrote:probably not appreciably.

but i'm someone who thinks that the uber-anal argument about the quality of a 320 mp3 vs. LAME is just a waste of breath. 99% of the time you aren't listening with an device that'll demonstrate a difference, if there is one. and 99% of that 99% you, the human, can't tell anyway.

So it's Live's rendering engine that makes my songs sound like crap.

Round 1: *ding*

nah, that's just user error =)

seriously, use itunes. by far the easiest. if your worried about audio quality in mp3's, then your a dink. if you want quality audio, use a lossless format.

on a mac, theres only 3 steps to convert a song to mp3( if you have your itunes set up to do it)

doubleclick you aiff/wav file so it copy's into itunes.

right click the song, create mp3 version

drag the file to where ever you want.


and if you want to be super cool, right click, get info, then you can set all your id3 tags.


to set itunes to convert to mp3, go to your preferences, and cd import menu.



anything more complicated than that is really not worth the bother.

www.nch.com.au/switch
www.voxapp.net

both really good, both free.
Switch is purely a conversion app, Vox is an audio player which also converts formats. Vox is worth getting just as a quick file preview tool - drop a folder full of sounds onto its icon and it will play em all. great for auditioning folders of drum hits etc. plays tracker files too.

For iTunes on the Mac just use this:

http://blacktree.com/ (click on the iTunes-LAME encoder add-on)


Works perfectly for me.

beats me wrote:My basic question is will an application that uses LAME encoding make my tracks sound less shitty on myspace's streaming player?

This is a good question - does anyone know if the myspace player transcodes all music?

anamexis wrote:

beats me wrote:My basic question is will an application that uses LAME encoding make my tracks sound less shitty on myspace's streaming player?

This is a good question - does anyone know if the myspace player transcodes all music?

I'm pretty sure it does. And if it doesn't I've never managed to figure out the bitrate you need to use to stop it converting your stuff into a bit mess of sound.

anamexis wrote:And regarding the superiority of LAME, here's one set of comparisons and here's another but there are quite a few out there. Not all MP3 encoders are equal. As free ones go, you can't get much better than LAME.

The first link doesn't work and the second link - if you read it, the Lame encoder doesn't come first. So that's blown your Lame superiority argument out of the water.

A lot depends on the bit rate you use, once you get to 256k MP3 you'll be hard pushed to find much of a difference between the different encoders or the CD original. So you're just arguing about differences that you only pick up if you lr them on expensive audio equipment.

Worth remembering as well that low quality mp3 and aac (especially) rule the audio world for a lot of people. iTunes used 128k aac for a long time and I don't recall hearing many users complaining about the quality, in fact I don't think I've ever read a single complaint.

jonny72 wrote: The first link doesn't work and the second link - if you read it, the Lame encoder doesn't come first. So that's blown your Lame superiority argument out of the water.

A lot depends on the bit rate you use, once you get to 256k MP3 you'll be hard pushed to find much of a difference between the different encoders or the CD original. So you're just arguing about differences that you only pick up if you lr them on expensive audio equipment.

Worth remembering as well that low quality mp3 and aac (especially) rule the audio world for a lot of people. iTunes used 128k aac for a long time and I don't recall hearing many users complaining about the quality, in fact I don't think I've ever read a single complaint.

Lame comes in second place in the second link, second only to Fraunhofer - a very expensive, commercial-only solution (Fraunhofer are the ones who developed MP3.)
So as I said, the best free solution.

And you're absolutely right, at higher bitrates, it is hard to tell the difference, it's the low bitrates where differences matter,
...And it's in the low bitrates that one can hear the differences in the encoders.
Quality most certainly matters when it comes to lower bitrates. Consider why iTunes is dropping 128k AAC for iTunes Store purchases in favor of 256k...

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....

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