Ableton Forum

So, after reading a couple articles about how the kids are preferring the sound of mp3s to higher quality stuff these days, I want to embrace the mindset and get the best mp3 sound. Wondering if anyone has any preferences for mp3 conversion or tips on how to get a mp3 sound with a lot of character without being excessively smeared and harsh. Follow?

is this a joke?

Dead serious. Younger people are starting to prefer the sound of MP3s to higher quality audio, so in that sense MP3s are becoming like analog tape or records in that they have a distinct quality that people are learning to like. Ive always just used whatever was handy for my mp3 conversion but now I want to pay more attention to this step and exploit the characteristic traits MP3 compression gives a song without it sounding too lousy.

Audacity (with the LAME encoder is one way to go).... works great.
iTunes is another.

Ive been using audacity. Maybe this is much ado about nothing. Maybe the trick is to master the audio track a certain way that exploits the sound of MP3s. Anyone know what considerations should be taken for mastering for MP3s?

to me the "classic" mp3 sound is 128 bit, that will fuck up the top frequencies.

out of curiosity, are you going to sample lo-fi stuff or just convert finished tracks?

i'm curious to read about this, do you have a link to articles?

edit: found some with google.
if you want noticeable mp3, i would suggest doing what the last poster said (why can't i see the posts when i'm writing the message?) and use 128 kbps.

it would be fun to have an effect that used mp3 codecs with some knobs for degrading the sound. kind of like sample rate and bit reduction but with perceptual models.

Here is one article on the subject:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090302/0130073943.shtml+


Good call on the 128 kb. Even knowing about this study its going to be hard for me to get comfortable with 128 kb MP3 conversion:-) Great idea about the MP3 codec conversion plugin. It would be great to be able to mess with the parameters in such a fashion. Can you specify within audacity the conversion rate? I looked around but couldnt find any settings... I use to convert with audacity and I think you could specify some different settings with that. im on a mac now though, so maybe Bias? To answer your question glamourboy, I'm thinking about this in terms of converting a finished track, not using lo fi samples.

While were on the topic of degradation, anyone have a dithering preference? Triangle seems to be the default...

I encode my tracks so they can only play in a vehicle that is traveling above 120 kph. Not only does this help with copy protection, but nobody notices how crappy my tracks really sound.

HA. Excellent.

"switch" is a nice converter for mac.

I have used SoundConverter for a couple of years and it works great. It supports all sorts of formats and you have access to many conversion parameters, so in a way you could play with them to degrade the sound as you wish.

http://www.dekorte.com/projects/sharewa ... Converter/


Also, I've read in Bob Katz's book that for the best wav->mp3 conversion you should use a 24 bit file to start with. I have never tried it though.

FUCK MP3

scaling the track a few dB's will prevent digital distortion from the mp3 conversion and improve quality. the lame encoder has a parameter to detect clipping plus it'll tell you approximately how much you need to scale in order to prevent clipping. if you convert your mp3's a 'joint stereo' instead of stereo they'll have a better dynamic range.