size of final mixed-down mp3

[nisthana]

Can someone tell me what determines the size of MP3 created after mixdown ? I recorded a song (2 tracks,one vocals,one karaoke), and mixed it down.The wav file's size was ~53M and the converted MP3 was 9M in size.Is there a way to reduce this size further ? If I use a compressor for the tracks, can it bring down the size of the file ?
9M is way to big size to share my song with friends :-((

[DaveO]

What sample rate are you using? At 128 the file size is about 1 MB per minute. Compare that to a WAV, which is about 10 MB/minute. In order to maintain sound quality I wouldn't go under 128 Mbps, but if quality isn't an issue than you can try a lower rate and see if it's acceptable to you.

[Slackmaster2K]

If I use a compressor for the tracks, can it bring down the size of the file ?

You don't know it yet, but you just made a very funny joke

DaveO is right...128kbps is the standard rate for putting tunes up on the net, and you'll see about 1MB/sec, so your 53MB wave should've gone down to about 5MB. You might be encoding at 192 or 256kbps.

Slackmaster 2000

[Christine K]

I believe the N-track default is 256K, so unless you've changed it to 128 or something else, that may be what it is mixed at.

CK

[DaveO]

Uhhhhhh, you all agreed with me but I actually made a pretty huge mistake. If you were to use the sample rate that I originally mentioned (128 Mbps!!!), the MP3 you'd get wouldn't be 5 MB. It would would be 5000 MB, or 5 GB!!! I should have said "Kbps", not "Mbps".


Christine, sounds like you're right. The MP3 would be about 5 MB if it was created with a sample rate of 128 Kbps, so 9 MB sounds about like it's in the right ball park for a sample rate of 256 Kbps.


Dave O.

[Christine K]

Ha ha Dave, I never caught that 128MB instead of 128KB. Yeah, hope you some big hard drives! Quality is gonna be pretty good though, maybe just a little overkill?

I did the same thing, mixed a recording and converted to MP3, found out it was 256kb. I also use that dB Power Amp that someone suggested, that's an excellent free program BTW.

CK

[nisthana]

hey guys,
it worked..seems like you guys are spending more time with n-Track than with your jobs ;-))
I tried to create an MP3 using 128Kbps rate, and it was ~4M compared to 8M produced when I was converting at the default rate of 256.
However the quality of sound aint so good in the 4M version (duh)
Slackmaster what was the joke you talked about eh ??
Whats a compressor anyway ?? Isnt it one of the things with pistons & motor and what not that compresses amonia converting it to liquid for your refrigerator ?? :-))
Jokes apart,tell me whats a compressor anyway..that was my next "newbie" question.
But what was the joke anyway ?

[b0b]

You could try encoding the mp3-file as mono. With that you can further decrease the file size. At least in this case ( 2 tracks, one vocal, one karaoke ) mono should work as well as stereo...

A compressor is a dynamic processor.
http://www.barryrudolph.com/pages/compdirectory.html

More articles here
http://www.studiocovers.com/articles3.htm