Locking Nut said:
Thanks, I've no idea what a 'VBR' is or does though.
There are several ways to encode an mp3 file. The 2 most common are "CBR" (constant bit rate) and "VBR" (variable bit rate). If you encode using CBR, then you pick the particular bitrate (for example, 192kbps "kilobytes per second"). The entire song, including silent portions, will all be at 192kbps.
If you use VBR, then the bitrate will fluctuate throughout the song depending on how much sonic space is being taken up at a particular moment...if there's a silent passage at the beginning, the encoding will be lower, because it doesn't require a high bitrate to preserve the sound of silence. I use VBR a lot for transferring individual tracks to somebody, because there may be long gaps where there's no sound at all in say, a vocal track, and encoding all that silence at 192kbps just makes the file unnecessarily large.
By the way, I agree that 192 is a pretty good bitrate...good balance between sonic quality and file size. Anything lower, and you really start to lose definition, especially in the top end...cymbals sound phasey and crappy and vocals sound grainy to me at 128kbps.
Now, your original question was something about volume drops...that shouldn't be happening. For starters, make sure you're converting at AT LEAST 192kbps, (or using the VBR setting with a higher quality), and post back if it still does that. If you're using CEP/AA to convert your files from wave files to mp3, then just click on the "options" button whenever you do the "save as" and select mp3. Post back if you're lost, lol.
