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MP3 Encoding

Studio Overviews

Posted by CapnZilog - Sep 30, 2004
@ 04:24:46 PM

Maximize your compression quality
by following these steps

First, a product pitch. Spend the
$20 and get yourself a copy of Music Match Jukebox Pro. It's
your cheapest source for the Fraunhofer MP3Pro encoder, which
is the latest industry-standard codec by the guys who invented
the MP3 format. Secondly, it supports the low bitrate
compression common to GW entries and not all encoders do. And
thirdly, it's a rock solid MP3/MP3Pro->WAV converter as
well; if you're involved with mixing together Team War
entries, it's fantastic.

If you're interested in
learning more about the MP3 encoding process and why some
files encode better than others, I recommend the Perceptual
Coding chapter of Ken Pohlmann's "Principles of Digital Audio,
4th ed." It's not a short answer, or I'd whip up an executive
summary here.

The beautiful thing about MMJBPro is
that it seems to do an intelligent job of selecting very
sensible encoding parameters for whatever compression scenario
you throw at it - unlike products based on the open source
LAME codec, which is a tweaker's paradise. So sensible in
fact, that there are very few encoding methods presented to
the user in MMJBPro: MP3 vs MP3Pro, VBR or not. That's it.

The only thing you can't easily do from within MMJBPro
is force a mono encode. To do that, pass it a mono file and it
will do the right thing.

The steps to an ideal encode
for almost any situation are these, and if somebody wants to
make a permanent helpfile here it is.

1) Mix your .WAV
file as loud as possible. Not just to be loud, but also to
keep the signal-noise ratio high. Create the loudest mix you
can *without clipping*, then Normalize it. If you have a hard
output limiter plugin like the Waves Ultramaximizer, use that
instead - the result will be a hotter/louder mix than
Normalization can give you.

2) Mix down to 24-bit if
you can. Give the encoder more to work with; MMJB and (for you
Windows guys) the Windows Media Encoder both support 24-bit
files. Even if you're recording in 16-bit, mix down to 24.
Doing this also helps to keep the signal-noise ratio high.

3) Don't bother with dither. If you don't know what
this is, never mind. If you do know, the consensus seems to be
that mixes intended for compression are better off without it.
And besides, you're mixing down to 24 bit, right?

4)
Bounce your mastered mix down to mono if you must. One less
channel doubles the available encoding bandwidth, which means
higher sound quality for you.

5) Encode using MMJB Pro
using MP3Pro VBR encoding and make several test encodes with
the Quality knob at different positions. Higher quality =
larger file size, so make the biggest file you can that will
fit within GW space constraints.

That's it.

-djh

3 comment(s) | viewed 282
time(s) | |

Your Comments

Commented by Cookies for the Poor - Oct 03,
2004 @ 02:22:29 AM

hah... excellent Capn! This will
most likely help me get a better encoding.

Commented by Pabligula - Mar 25, 2005 @
07:47:31 PM

I didn't know that we could post
mp3pro files. Will the GW player... play
them?

Commented by freak4pedals - Apr 12, 2006 @
11:38:19 AM

I hadn't thought of going mono for
some of the longer tunes...good
idea

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