MP3 Resampler

James Martin · Tue 20 Apr, 2004 19.22

Is there any good freeware that will let me bulk-resample my MP3s to 128Kbs? I've got about 15Gb of MP3s, for the most part at 256 and 320 and I don't need nor want anything more than 128. And my MP3 player eats battery playing high-bitrate files.

I just want to say "128 everything in My Music" rather than redo each one in Audtion.

Any ideas?

Neil Jones · Tue 20 Apr, 2004 21.21

Goldwave 4 will do it and I'm sure Goldwave 5 can as well. Use the Batch Conversion option.

http://www.goldwave.com is the web address for this nice little program.

Chris · Tue 20 Apr, 2004 21.23

Flava wrote:Is there any good freeware that will let me bulk-resample my MP3s to 128Kbs? I've got about 15Gb of MP3s, for the most part at 256 and 320 and I don't need nor want anything more than 128. And my MP3 player eats battery playing high-bitrate files.

I just want to say "128 everything in My Music" rather than redo each one in Audtion.

Any ideas?

It's best not to re-encode MP3 files at a different bitrate because you will lose quite a bit of quality. Best to delete and rip again afresh at your new bitrate if you don't want digital mush.

And anyway, isn't there a batch conversion feature available in Audition? (file > batch file convert) ?

James Martin · Tue 20 Apr, 2004 22.04

Actually, you're quite right, it is "mushy" and there's no way I'm re-ripping 2500 MP3s! Think what I'll do is ask for a USB hard drive for the laptop for my birthday - apparently you can pick 'em up quite cheap now.

Dr Lobster* · Wed 21 Apr, 2004 14.47

I have seen an external 200gb maxtor usb drive for sale recently from Insight for £199, however, since the drive is a maxtor, you may want to purchase a USB to IDE converter from CPC. It will look a bit messy, but it will save you £££ and it means you don't have to rely on a maxtor drive.

cdd · Wed 21 Apr, 2004 19.04

why would anyone want to resample to 128, 192 and above is only OK I think!

SteveL · Sat 24 Apr, 2004 19.01

They are very poor quality, prone to breaking easily (or without reason).

Big Brother · Tue 27 Apr, 2004 10.39

cdd wrote:why would anyone want to resample to 128, 192 and above is only OK I think!

You can barely notice the difference. It depends what software it was resampled in and the quality of the audio before it was resampled. For me I stick to 160 for no particular reason either lol.

HOWEVER there are countless people in TV Forum land who seem to think that if they re-encode a 128Kbps to something like 320Kbps, that they get better sound. Nooooooooo you fools.

128 or 160 is more than enough for MP3s. Any larger and your files can be rediculous in size, and for an MP3 player it's pointless because you'll get far less tracks on it.

Edit: Maxtor Drives. What a waste of money I say. I spent nearly £150 on a brand new huge 120GB drive last year I think. Put most of my files onto it and suddenly it gives up the ghost. I bought an IBM Deskstar drive to replace it - yet the Maxtor drive still works but the system crashes frequently, the drive makes wierd noises etc.

Luckily I've transferred most of the files to the new disc so when the drive does go it won't be a huge loss - but I can just give up a 120Gb drive like that when it does still partly work.

But really they break to easy. I've had 2 before this one and they both just stopped working or became corrupt.

SteveL · Tue 27 Apr, 2004 20.35

Big Brother wrote:
cdd wrote:why would anyone want to resample to 128, 192 and above is only OK I think!
You can barely notice the difference. It depends what software it was resampled in and the quality of the audio before it was resampled. For me I stick to 160 for no particular reason either lol.

HOWEVER there are countless people in TV Forum land who seem to think that if they re-encode a 128Kbps to something like 320Kbps, that they get better sound. Nooooooooo you fools.

128 or 160 is more than enough for MP3s. Any larger and your files can be rediculous in size, and for an MP3 player it's pointless because you'll get far less tracks on it.

There's a hell of a difference. At 128, the cymbals especially become all flangy and lose their crispness. It is rather obvious when you listen to a file at 320kbps and then listen to it downsampled to 128kbps. Above 192 it is hard to hear the difference, and at 256 it's almost identical, extremely hard to hear the difference. But 128 is a no no!

And you're right, I don't know why people seem to think if they upsample their files to 320 from 128 it'll increase the quality. It won't. You can't create the extra data like that, it's already been lost in compression before. Otherwise you'd just be able to downsample everything to 1kbps so it takes up hardly any space, and then upsample it back to 320 before listening to it.

Big Brother · Tue 27 Apr, 2004 22.11

SteveL wrote:
Big Brother wrote:
cdd wrote:why would anyone want to resample to 128, 192 and above is only OK I think!
You can barely notice the difference. It depends what software it was resampled in and the quality of the audio before it was resampled. For me I stick to 160 for no particular reason either lol.

HOWEVER there are countless people in TV Forum land who seem to think that if they re-encode a 128Kbps to something like 320Kbps, that they get better sound. Nooooooooo you fools.

128 or 160 is more than enough for MP3s. Any larger and your files can be rediculous in size, and for an MP3 player it's pointless because you'll get far less tracks on it.
There's a hell of a difference. At 128, the cymbals especially become all flangy and lose their crispness. It is rather obvious when you listen to a file at 320kbps and then listen to it downsampled to 128kbps. Above 192 it is hard to hear the difference, and at 256 it's almost identical, extremely hard to hear the difference. But 128 is a no no!

And you're right, I don't know why people seem to think if they upsample their files to 320 from 128 it'll increase the quality. It won't. You can't create the extra data like that, it's already been lost in compression before. Otherwise you'd just be able to downsample everything to 1kbps so it takes up hardly any space, and then upsample it back to 320 before listening to it.

128 is fair, most of those music site, mycokemusic etc all have 128 and it's fine as long as the it was taken from the original. I rip into 160 from CD's as yes you can notice the difference. But with anything above that I wouldn't really lol.