Sending sound files

[Tommy Mc]

I would like to exchange WAV files with other members of our band. I've been using Internet Tapedeck to work up licks and ideas. The mixes, even for a short solo can contain alot of data, and are really too large to send as an attachment. I assume I need a way to compress them, or is there a better way? Or is this just not practical...?
Thanks for any suggestions.

[David Pennybaker]

.wav files are practically impractical to send (pardon the intentional pun).

You'll have to convert them to .mp3 files.

Even then, using a very lossy setting, and mono, you'll be sending about 500 kb per 3 minutes worth of music.

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[Ernie Renn]

You can also use a Real Encoder to make Real Audio files out of the wavs.

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My best,
Ernie

The Official Buddy Emmons Website
www.buddyemmons.com

[Tommy Mc]

How would I go about converting those files?
I can see that it must be impractical to send long segments, but some files like solos and intros are only fractions of a minute.
I'm sorry to admit that I'm not up on mp3, and how to convert to it, or even play it back for that matter. Of course, Real Audio is out there, and I know the other band members have it on their computers. Even assuming that I convert to one or the other, then how do I send them? Thanks for any advice.

[Jack Stoner]

There are a lot of free MP3 converters and players available to download. MP3 compresses the wav down to a smaller size, however, like was mentioned for fidelity it will be approx 1meg for 1 minute of music.

check http://www.download.com
or http://www.filemine.com

These are two good download sites to start with to download the MP3 s/w you need.

[RickRichtmyer]

I like MusicMatch Jukebox for MP3 conversion. There's a free version and it can be found at http://www.musicmatch.com/

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Rick Richtmyer
Good News

[Tommy Mc]

Thanks for those great links. I downloaded an mp3 program and am playing around with it now.

[Graham]

Tommy:
Even using MP3, it will make a fairly good sized file to send as an attachment. If you have a web page, you might consider making up a page and posting your licks etc. there for the other members of your band to download. As they take the ones you put up, you then delete them from your server and add others.

The other alternative would be as Ernie said- Use Real Audio, which makes a far smaller file and if recorded and encoded at a rate higher than 16, still makes for pretty decent listening. I encode all the Real Audio on my site at 40 kbps and it comes out quite well.

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Rebel™
ICQ 614585
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<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Graham on 13 September 2000 at 05:23 PM.]</p></FONT>

[Dale de Aragon]

My personal preference for encoding mp3's is the Xing encoder. It has the option to encode
with a variable bitrate which reads the wave, analyzes it for sonic content, and encodes it with the optimal bitrate for each digital sample. The resulting mp3 is generally smaller with a minumum of audible loss. Unless you're going to burn an original release, 96k is usually sufficient, especially if you want to send it with a dialup connection.

[Bobby Lee]

Don't you mean 9.6K?

[Tommy Mc]

Thanks for all the help. I achieved success by sending a mp3 file to one of our band members. At least for short clips this is going to work fine.

[Jim Cohen]

I had good success with files converted to the Windows Media Player format (*.wmf, I think it's called.) They're compressed wav files, but much smaller than *.wav's and much smaller than mp3s. They could be uploaded and downloaded MUCH more quickly.