Is there a way to change a mp3 file to a lower bitrate without reripping?

Question

I've got a nice library of music on my computer that I've ripped from CD, mostly at 256kbs. I'm wanting to copy a lot of it onto an mp3 player (not an IPod), but wanting to be able to get as much music on as possible, so I'm wanting to make copies of the songs at, say, a 96kbs rip rate. But I don't want to have to sit down and re-rip every single cd (what can I say, I'm lazy) Is there a way to make lower bit rate copies of the songs without doing it over again, and if so, what programs do it well? I need the songs to end up in mp3 or wma formats when done.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can transcode it. This means decoding the mp3 you have and re-encoding it at a lower bitrate. It is not recommended though as the extra noise introduced will be fairly audible. 320s may be alright for certain types of music, and 256s *might* be subjectively okay. Anything less will sound bad, especially with dynamically compressed music (all the equaliser bars maxed out) and rock/metal.

You really are better off re-ripping it from scratch, but if you have to transcode, LAME gives the best results. You will get less ring modulation if you recode at half the original bitrate, which is simple enough for constant bitrate but not possible for variable bitrate files.

96 kbps is only really suitable for speech recordings. You can consider it to be around the same quality as average AM radio. Music will sound bad enough if encoded directly from CDs at this bitrate but awful if made through transcoding.

Still, all you can do is try it, I might be less tolerant of the mp3 noise than you are.

Answer 2

go to downloads.com and search for mp3 converter under softwear get one that converts wma wav mp3 (well as long as it has mp3 in the list) when converting go from mp3 to mp3 and customize the settings to what bitrate you want

Answer 3

No you will have to rerip it you can download mp3 check out http://www.ipod-vibez.com/musicdownload.html