320 to 256 batch conversion

V

VolvoR

Gawd
Joined
Jan 28, 2004
Messages
878
ok, Google was no help at all...

About 75% of my music collection is in 320kbps. This is HUGE. I have over 100gb of music on my iPod alone. I'd like to convert all the songs that are 320 to 256. I've listened to a couple of songs back to back and can't tell the difference when listening through my ear buds, or on my big, fairly high end home audio system.

I think that the savings in space will be worth any loss that there is.

So, the question is, how do I take all the music in iTunes (or the music folders themselves) and convert them down to 256. Keep in mind that I have no way of knowing which folders are 320 and which aren't. Does anyone get what I'm trying to do here???

How hard can this be? I'm sure it'll have to run for quite some time to get this done with this much music, but there has to be a piece of software out there that will allow this without doing it one song at a time....

HELP!
Thanks
 
Transcoding from one lossy format to another will result in serious quality loss. They won't sound anything like 256kb/s files encoded directly, they will sound much, much worse. Not worth saving 25% of the space the originals took up.

Dustin
 
dustNbone said:
Transcoding from one lossy format to another will result in serious quality loss. They won't sound anything like 256kb/s files encoded directly, they will sound much, much worse. Not worth saving 25% of the space the originals took up.

Dustin
Click to expand...

This. If you're going to do it, you need to do it from the original file.

Why are you so pressed for space? Are you trying to stuff more on your iPod? Limited HD space on a laptop?
 
In the past I've used dbPowerAmp to convert audio files. However, that was years ago so I don't remember if it'll accomplish exactly what you want. Even then, there's no doubt there are other programs that will accomplish what you want since transcoding is fairly common (though maybe not so much MP3-to-MP3 conversions).

I wouldn't recommend it though; it seems like you'll be sacrificing a lot of time and some sound quality just to save a few gigabytes. Why not just buy another hard drive?
 
Personally I rip everything to FLAC, and then encode to 128-256 MP3 usually VBR.

Don't reencode from MP3, it won't be great.
 
To answer OP's question? Use Foobar, load all your songs into a play list, then sort them by bitrate. Then you can select multiple files and use the converter to do all the songs at once. You can choose where to output the files, the codec/bitrate (ie. MP3 V0/256/192), and the filename format (uses tags, or it can just use the old file name).

My suggestion is to cut down your library. Jesus, 100GB? Do you listen to every single song, and like every single song? I'd recommend cutting it down to just best songs per album/single songs you like.

If you own the CDs (physically), go rip them to FLAC, then down-convert them.
 
You'll save 15 GB by doing this.

Is it worth the time, and subsequently the low quality audio you'll receive in the end? To me - negative.
 
Wow, great responses! Thanks all!!

I really only figured that I'd lose a bit of quality, but nothing drastic. Maybe I'll try a song or two and see how it sounds.

The problem is the iPod. It's about 5gb from full. Hard drive space I've got TONS of! (a spare terrabyte anyone?)

As for cutting down on my music collection, that's harder than it sounds. Compared to a lot of my friends, I'm just getting started. Some of them are over 500gb of FLAC music, and the biggest MP3 collection is at 300gb!!!

And hey, even if I only save 15gb, it's better than nothing. The trick is to be able to do it as a batch file, if that's not possible, I'm not going to bother!

Thanks again, and I'll let you guys know how I make out..
 
Transcoding from one lossy format to another will result in serious quality loss. They won't sound anything like 256kb/s files encoded directly, they will sound much, much worse. Not worth saving 25% of the space the originals took up.
Click to expand...

This, that and the other!!!!!

Seriously don't do it. Just suffer and enjoy. For the record, you can do entire folders of conversions with WinLame.
 
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