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How to Compress Your Mix for b00mb0x
Ingredients
You'll Need -
CDex (freeware)
a mix
I should mention at the front of this tutorial that
if your mix isn't compressed enough for the site, we'll compress it for
you. So if you don't want to learn this; please go about doing whatever
you've been doing. If, however, like the young moth who yearns to cocoon
in study so he may one day flourish like a butterfly, you would like to
learn this yourself and save us the time... well here ya go:
When saving your mix in whatever program you have used,
you want to save as a WAV file. NOT as an mp3 file. Save this file somewhere
temporary where you can find it. It will be quite large.
Now, download, install and run CDex. This is the program
you will be using to compress your mix.
We need to adjust your encoding settings (how the mp3 will
be compressed). This will be one time only if you will only be using CDex
to compress mixes for our site:
Select Options from the top menu, then select Settings.
(Or just hit your F4 key)
Select the Encoder tab (it should be auto-selected the first
time this window opens) and change the settings to look like below:
CDex Configuration Settings for b00mb0x
Thread Priority - Normal - Normal should
be fine for you. Setting this higher will allow your mp3 to encode
fast, but at the expense of the rest of your computers performance.
Encoder - LAME MP3 Encoder
Check 'don't delete ripped WAV after conversion' if you want
to encode your mix at a higher quality for some other use.
Version - MPEG 1
Bitrate Minimum - 32kbs - this is important. you will
be wasting precious file space if you set this higher. Also, there
is no degredation in sound quality by setting this low.
Max - 320kbs - same idea. You can set this as high as you
want. All you are doing is giving the program latitude to do what
it does best (which is make these decisions for you).
Mode - J-stereo - J-stereo will encode identical left/right
audio track sections as Mono, again saving precious file size
with no difference in sound.
Keep private, checksum, Original and Copyright unchecked. Most
of these are silly copyright protection schemes; except Checksum;
which may degrade sound quality so leave it alone.
Quality - Normal (q=5) - Since your encoding at a lower bitrate,
setting quality to High might actually HURT your sound quality.
DO NOT set quality to low. It will be. Low quality, that is.
Uncheck - On-the-fly-MP3 Encoding - This has no bearing on
what we are doing as it only refers to when you are ripping from
CD (you are encoding from a WAV file right now). But it's best
to keep it unchecked in general unless you are very low on hard
drive space.
VBR Method - VBR-MTRH - I'm not getting into explaining this.
Just select that one. I'm right and you are wrong.
VBR Quality - VBR9 - This is the most important setting. VBR9
is the lowest quality setting for variable bitrate and the only
setting that is guaranteed to make your mix small enough for our
site (as long as it's under 74 Minutes that is). VBR9 sounds totally
fine. I wouldn't pump a VBR9 through your local stadium show,
but for us serving your mixes it sounds totally cool.
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For the record, if you want to save your mix at a higher quality for your
own purposes, all of these settings apply for the most part. A decent
higher quality setting without giving away the file-size cow is to keep
all the above settings, but change Quality to High (q=2) and change VBR
Quality to VBR 2. For super-bestest-ever quality change to VBR 0 but at
that point, why not just keep the WAV file you freak?
Now hit the Filenames Tab.
Next to Wav-->MP3, hit the triple dot button (...). Select the folder
where you want your mix to be saved once an mp3. Pick somewhere you can
easily find it (like Desktop).
Now you have your settings ready. Click OK.
You now want to select, from the buttons on the right side,
the fourth large button from the top (the third from the bottom). The
popup text will say for this button "Convert WAV File(s) to Compressed
Audio File(s)" (Below pic - 1.).
A windows will popup where you now must find where you saved your WAV
file. Hit the triple dot (...) button next to Directory (Below
pic - 2.).
Find the folder your WAV file is in and select it. All WAV files in that
file will be shown now in the window below. Highlight your mix and hit
the large CONVERT button on the bottom (Above pic
- 3.)
If you have an ancient processor like mine (300mhz Celeron),
go get some dinner as this will now take 2 hours.
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