MP3 process flow

WaveLab
#1

Hello,

I have all my songs mastered and CD finished with WAV files. Now I want to convert these to mp3;s and have a few questions around the process.

1/ I’m taking my Montage from this [prior to rendering] and then select dither and then mp3 in the render menu. I’m going with the LAME encoder here. In the Format box (via Encoding) under VBR, it gives options of highest quality, high quality, med quality … Anyone have any experience on what gives the best quality with the file size? I know Highest quality is probably the best, but I don’t want to have the file size to big as to have buffer pauses on playback online. My music was recorded with a lot of dynamics, so quality is important to me, but not overkill. In the Method box below, it has Highest {slow} or Fastest. I gather from the help that it’ll take more time to to process the files and has nothing to do with the resulting file size?
p.s. I did gather from research that VBR gives better quality for the same file size than CBR

2/ After rendering the wav files from the CD to mp3, it opens up in Audio Workspace under 1 filename with all the 12 songs as mp3.'s. I then convert this audio file to a montage and then use my external editor [id3 v2 editor] to add lyrics and other stuff to the mp3’s. But there is only 1 file with all 12 songs (or clips) in that file. I want to be able to add meta data to each individual clip, but it only sees one file with all 12 clips. How do I separate the 1 file with 12 clips so I have 12 separate clips, allowing me to add data to each clip?

I’m new to this part, so any help is much appreciated

#2

1/ I’m not sure about the ‘method’ option, but it sounds like the processing would be more accurate when chosing the ‘highest’ option. About playback quality: It may be so that VBR has a better quality to file size ratio, but if online streaming without pauses is a concern, then there could be problems (where a high bit-rate is needed in the music). This also depends on which player is used by the end user. I always use CBR, with a 192 kbps bitrate these days - this is also the rate big radio stations here use. To be safe I sometimes use 160 kbps.

2/ You should render the montage to separate files. I suppose you already have CD-markers in there, so every song is already a region. Check the options in the render dialog, there you can select what type of output is used.

Luck, Arjan

#3

Thanks for the info Arjan. I selected the info between the CD markers and successfully added lyrics/pictures etc… to the individual mp3’s in the Audio workspace from the rendered files.

For the mp3 singles and samples, it’s easy enough to export these files individually. When you want to have one continuous digital album of mp3’s [like a CD] with spaces in between songs, do you know what format is required for this? Is it one mp3 file containing all of the songs of the album?

#4

I’m not aware of any such thing existing… I doubt it is one long mp3 file, cause that would be very inefficient and you’re forced to load the whole album if you want to listen to the last song. Then also you’d have to manually fast forward to get there, as mp3 has no markers inside the file to skip through. If you want an online digital album, I suggest you look into a flash or javascript player.

Luck, Arjan

#5

It isn’t an online digital album as far as playing it online. It is to download the complete album to your computer via my website. I’m just not sure what people use for this

#6

I talked to the website designer and all he needs is the digital files separately, so everything’s good now

thanks for your help