MP3 Making

[Winslow Leech]

Any tips or tricks for creating good sounding MP3s?

Thanks

[SqueeGees]

make sure the mix is good

[Tim Casey]

Make sure you've normalized your track.

If you've got a Mac, iTunes does a great job. Here's a link to one of my pages:

http://www.lowbudgetrecords.com/pages/speechless.htm

Scroll down and click on "Keep Thee Hope For Me".

[Babaluma]

all the info you could ever want on making the best possible sounding mp3's (and more!) is available here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/

more specifically, the list of recommended lame compiles:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/ind ... opic=28123

and the list of recommended lame settings:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/ind ... opic=28124

i think the most important thing is to use the lame encoder (3.90.3 and 3.96.1 seem to be the most popular versions at the moment) with the "--alt-preset standard" (or higher) tag, and make sure you run mp3gain on the file afterwards to ensure that there will be no digital clipping (a high quality aiff or wav may not hit 0dBFS, but that doesn't mean the mp3 encoding won't result in digital overs). mp3gain is available here:

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

hope that helped!

gregg.

[Rigsby]

Yeah, LAME's good, and go for the standard or higher setting and you should be golden. LAME's pretty true to the original wav IMO, but it's worth taking note of any alterations in sound that the MP3 may have and second-guessing this in the mixing. Some MP3s come out a little different tonally from wavs, so it's worth checking this, sometimes it means you have to EQ a mix a little, generally though i have had no problems with LAME.