Down size mp3 size (bg music)

[vincent0s]

Hi i just started to create my own wad with menu-background and music.

 

But the mp3's are relatively big ~3mb each.

 

My questions:

1. Does someone has a nice tip for downsizing it 
2. Is it possible to make the sounds less "Clear" so it sort of sounds more MS-DOSish

 

Kind regards

[Immorpher]

Hmm! I wonder if Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) would be better for this task as it tends to be better quality (in my opinion) and more compatible for similar file sizes.

Then to reduce clarity, you can reduce the wave quality from like 44.1 kHz (which I am guessing its currently at) to 22 kHz or even 11 kHz. Optionally, then if you have a frequency mixer (like with audacity or something) boost the very high frequencies in the reduced quality wave. This should save a lot of file space when converting back to mp3 or ogg.

Typically I would recommend reducing the audio quality from 16 bit to 8 bit to replicate older formats. But I cant see any good info on seeing if you can get MP3 or OGG natively storing and decoding to 8 bit. You can still reduce your wave files to 8 bit, to replicate the effect, and then save as mp3 or ogg. But you probably wont save file space by doing that at there might be some artifacts produced on the "crunched" sounds when compressing. Also programs like audacity might have ways of introducing bit crunch more dynamically or distortion as well.

If you want to try these options and need help, let me know and I can do some tests at the beginning of next month (I am moving homes at the moment).

[vincent0s]

Thnx you got any recom of software?
I am editing via mac.. so i am limited to that option.

But i see enough free software online (https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-free-cheap-audio-editors-mac-os-x/)

 

edit: i know that apple has garageband but i do not like 1gb+ software packages for simple work :P - trying Audacity right know (~30mb download)

 

edit: doing low pass does not really help (yes it cuts down the freq so size< excusie) - playing with the pitch is nice ;) result: happy guitar --> evil guitar :D

Edited February 20, 2020 by vincent0s

[ketmar]

15 hours ago, Immorpher said:

ut I cant see any good info on seeing if you can get MP3 or OGG natively storing and decoding to 8 bit.

nope. such compressed audio doesn't store PCM data. also, reducing sample frequency won't have a huge effect, because... it doesn't store PCM data. ;-) reenconding with lower encoding quality/bps may help, tho (if the OP don't mind some "muffled" sound).

Edited February 21, 2020 by ketmar

[vincent0s]

12 minutes ago, ketmar said:

nope. such compressed audio doesn't store PCM data. also, reducing sample frequency won't have a huge effect, because... it doesn't store PCM data. ;-) reenconding with lower encoding quality/bps may help, tho (if the OP don't mind some "muffled" sound).

 

Do you have a tutorial?

[Barry Burton]

I use Audacity (it's free) to convert .mp3 to .ogg. There's a quality slider when you export files to .ogg that can reduce the filesize as long as you're okay with losing some audio fidelity. IIRC, I was able to reduce a 4MB .mp3 to only 1.3MB converting to .ogg with a quality setting of 3.

[ketmar]

4 hours ago, vincent0s said:

Do you have a tutorial?

sorry, nope. i am mostly terminal guy, and using my own tools (because i am too lazy to learn how to use tools i didn't wrote).