Ableton Forum

I've got an album coming out that features a card for MP3 downloads. We've got vinyl masters and CD Masters. I know how to create ID3 tags, but I don't know much about MP3 compression/methods. The mastering house charges 100 bucks.

Any advice as to whether I should do the compression myself from a ripped CD Master or just give the guy 100 bucks? I guess I'm asking, is there a level of expertise here that can't be picked up in a few days?

Thanks!

As far as I know there is no reason to pay 100 bucks to get mp3 created, you can rip the master CD making sure the rip is made with the right specifications for your purpose, probably 320 Kbps VBR would be ok for a internet download.

Mp3 is a lossy format, so by definition there is no high quality in this format (compared to a WAV file or similar),
the problem seems to arise when someone gets a file from a bad source, say, a scratched or dirty CD, or another mp3.
I think its ok ripping from your master CD.

Greetings

Check out Media Monkey. you can tag and translate audio formats

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

$100 to generate MP3's? Really? That's crazy.

You can easily do this yourself, it's not that hard and there's no secret that a mastering engineer will know that will make it better. Stick with a conversion tool that uses either LAME or Fraunhofer encoding for the best results, and use 320kbps, joint stereo, NON-VBR settings. I recommend the free app Max from sbooth.org if you're on OSX. To add the ID3 tags and album artwork, your best bet is iTunes, since it's free, easy to use, and most people have it installed already.

I, and many other forum users use CDEX with the LAME.dll extension to use the LAME encoder.

Thanks everyone. You've confirmed my suspicion that I can create these MP3s myself. If I run into issues/discoveries I'll post them here in this thread.

Thanks again!

Tarekith wrote:$100 to generate MP3's? Really? That's crazy.

You can easily do this yourself, it's not that hard and there's no secret that a mastering engineer will know that will make it better. Stick with a conversion tool that uses either LAME or Fraunhofer encoding for the best results, and use 320kbps, joint stereo, NON-VBR settings. I recommend the free app Max from sbooth.org if you're on OSX. To add the ID3 tags and album artwork, your best bet is iTunes, since it's free, easy to use, and most people have it installed already.

Tarekith, you can use MAX to take care for the artwork and ID3 tags as well, can't you ?

Maybe you can use FLAC files, since that seems to be the new trend in content download with vinyl albums these days.

The Carpet Cleaner wrote:

Tarekith wrote:$100 to generate MP3's? Really? That's crazy.

You can easily do this yourself, it's not that hard and there's no secret that a mastering engineer will know that will make it better. Stick with a conversion tool that uses either LAME or Fraunhofer encoding for the best results, and use 320kbps, joint stereo, NON-VBR settings. I recommend the free app Max from sbooth.org if you're on OSX. To add the ID3 tags and album artwork, your best bet is iTunes, since it's free, easy to use, and most people have it installed already.

Tarekith, you can use MAX to take care for the artwork and ID3 tags as well, can't you ?

Doh, good point, yea you can. I forgot about that.

Tarekith wrote:

The Carpet Cleaner wrote:

Tarekith wrote:$100 to generate MP3's? Really? That's crazy.

You can easily do this yourself, it's not that hard and there's no secret that a mastering engineer will know that will make it better. Stick with a conversion tool that uses either LAME or Fraunhofer encoding for the best results, and use 320kbps, joint stereo, NON-VBR settings. I recommend the free app Max from sbooth.org if you're on OSX. To add the ID3 tags and album artwork, your best bet is iTunes, since it's free, easy to use, and most people have it installed already.

Tarekith, you can use MAX to take care for the artwork and ID3 tags as well, can't you ?

Doh, good point, yea you can. I forgot about that.

cheers