Converting MP3s to lower bitrate?
 

anybody know of a good app (preferably freeware) that will convert the bitrate of an mp3? of course, i'm thinking converting down from a high bitrate to a lower one just for use on my mp3 player (to make room for more tunes).

i would think converting up wouldn't work out too well - seems to me you'd just have a file that sounds the same as the lower bitrate one (maybe even worse?) that would take up more space.

the mp3s i want to convert are ones i made from my own CDs. so one option is to re-rip and encode at the lower bitrate, but i'd rather just convert the mp3s i've already created than have to re-rip all those CDs.

i did some searching to see if this had already been addressed, but i didn't find anything. i apologize in advance if i missed it.

iTunes can do this. You just need to change importing options. You can lower bit rate and sample rate, and re-encode to mp3.

Don't know of any FREEWARE apps, but a good one that I use for things like that is Blaze Media Pro ( www.blazemp.com )

itunes? not on a already ripped mp3, afaik. i've wondered the same myself...i haven't found a solution.

I assume you are on Windows, since you didn't specify. Your answer is dBpowerAMP, which is freeware and can batch-convert anything to anything else; I used it to go from FLAC to AAC.

yes, i am on windows and my player isn't an ipod, so i don't use itunes. thanks for the suggestion on dBpowerAMP - i'll have to check that one out.

i use dBpowerAMP too. highly recommend it. :thumbsup:

I use dBpowerAMP Music Converter. I downlaoded it from http://www.nonags.com/
It will rip from a cd or convert existing files (two different exes) There are also others at that site if you have other requirements...

i like to use CDex. it's free, and does all the things i need for ripping CD's and converting mp3 files to wav files, and vice versa.

Many would say that converting your mp3's to a lower bitrate (transcoding) will have a more noticable effect on the sound quality than if you re-ripped them at a lower bitrate. Of course it all depends on what what you hear and how they sound to you

i wouldn't have thought so, but i will certainly check it out. re-ripping and encoding at a different bitrate would take tons more time, of course.

That's why I tried before I posted

I use MusicMatch. I believe they have a free version on their website. I have read that converting like this will cause more info to be lost than if you did the new rip but whatever sounds good. Much worse to convert up than down of course.

This is why the best thing to do is rip to a lossless format like FLAC, then you can downconvert to whatever format you want and it's the same quality as if you got the CD and ripped again. Problem is you need the hard drive space to hold it all, but with some drives costing 35 cents per gigabyte or less it's not such a big deal any more. I also highly recommend CDex.

maybe not as big a deal as it used to be, but still... i don't have 500 GB sitting around to hold my collection in FLAC format. i dig FLAC and SHN, but i don't really want to have another copy of my music sitting around taking up that much space. i figured there'd be no trouble in transcoding down, but obviously going in the opposite direction wouldn't work at all.

Yes, you can.

1. Go to Preferences / Importing, and change the settings to whatever new settings you want (say, mono MP3 at 64 kbps).

2. Select the songs that you want to transcode.

3. Select Advanced / Convert.

Voila, new song files at a new rate.

4. IMPORTANT Go back to Preferences / Importing, and change the settings back to your normal settings. Otherwise, all of your newly-imported CDs will be at the wrong settings.