Audio Conversion mp2 to mp3/wav

[Griga]

There's one DVBViewer-feature that is easily forgotten, because it gets burried under all that video stuff:

 

The DVBViewer is an excellent radio recorder!

 

There are a lot of good opportunities for audio recording: All the music you could wish from DVB radio channels, or radio plays (in German: Hörspiele), which are an alternative you should try - no staring in the same direction all the time, as for videos, just freely walking around while listening, or happily lying on your sofa with your girlfriend and... well, let's come to the technical part now:

 

So, what do you get after switching to a radio channel and clicking the red button? In most cases it will be a stereo mp2-file with a bitrate of 192 KBit/s and a sample rate of 48 KHz (remember this - it's an important point!).

 

mp2 stands for MPEG 1 Layer 2 audio compression, which is an ancient form of the modern mp3. There is some compatibility... in some cases "conversion " to mp3 can be done by renaming the file to mp3. But not always. For example, Nero Burning ROM won't swallow it, by no means.

 

So, if you want to make audio CDs or true mp3 out of your recordings, you need a conversion tool. For audio CDs it should produce a wav file with a sample rate of 44,1 KHz (!!!). The sample rate conversion must be included, otherwise you can get into trouble. For example, Nero Burning ROM accepts 48 KHz wav files as input for audio CDs, but ends up with a bad sound quality - high frequencies above a certain volume level are accompanied by hissing noises, as known from bad analogue recordings.

 

If you search for mp2-wav-conversion tools in the www, the first software you'll find will be the freeware player winamp. There's a good how-to-description at

 

http://www.radio-now.co.uk/mp2_to_wav_conversion.htm

 

I didn't try it, because I didn't want to install another player for a simple conversion task. But if you already have it... then make sure it's version 2.xx. With the new version 3.xx the mp2-wav conversion is not possible, as I have heard (please correct me if this is wrong).

 

If you don't want to install winamp, you can try a small & smart freeware tool named CDex, which is my favourite (download size 1.3 MB, German and Italian versions are available - go to the bottom of the download page and select "all downloads"). You'll get it at

 

http://www.cdex.n3.net/

 

CDex is a CD ripper that uses the lame mp3 encoder, but it does mp2/mp3 to wav conversion as well (and of course mp2 to mp3). After launching it you will immediatly see the mp3->wav button, which works for mp2 too - but now listen to my strange advise: Don't touch it! It will produce nice, clean wav files, but unfortunately with an unchanged sample rate of 48 KHz.

 

There is another possibility for converting to wav with CDex that includes the sample rate conversion to 44,1 KHz. But it's really hidden - I found it after having studied the CDex help very carefully. Try the following steps:

 

1) Select Options/Settings and then the filename tab. There select the target folder for the converted files by clicking the [...] button.

 

2) Go to the encoder tab and select the wave output encoder in the encoder dropdown list. Make sure that the sample rate is set to 44100 Hz, then click OK.

 

3) Select mpeg -> mpeg in the Convert menu (seems strange, but it works, because the output "mpeg encoder" now is the selected wave encoder - know what I mean?)

 

4) Select the folder containing the mp2 files by clicking the [...] button.

 

5) In the file list select all the mp2 files you want to convert and click the convert button.

 

It then takes about two minutes for one hour of mp2 audio with a Pentium 1.6 GHz, which is quite fast.

 

If you want to convert your mp2 files to mp3, follow the steps above, but in step 2 select the Lame MP3 Encoder in the dropdown list, and check, if the mp3 settings fit your needs. You can select different bitrates (affecting the filesize) and quality levels (affecting the conversion time). For mp2 with 192 KBit/s, an output mp3-bitrate of 128 KBit/s in high quality proved to be ok.

 

There is another freeware audio conversion tool that might be usefull. It is dBpowerAMP, and you get it at

 

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

 

(download size 1.5 MB, English version only, includes lame mp3 encoder). Conversion with this tool is very comfortable:

 

- Rightclick the mp2 file in an explorer window.

 

- In the context menu select the "Convert to" entry, that has been installed by dbPowerAmp.

 

Besides that you get a lot of additional informations about the file by inspecting the properties on a new tab created by dbPowerAmp.

 

The mp2 to wav conversion leads to the desired 44.1 KHz wav file, but it works quite slowly - about five times slower than CDex. Someone with very sensitive ears should test if the slower conversion yields to a significant gain of sound quality and post his opinion here - I couldn't hear any difference. And for additonal features like setting the task priority for lengthy mp3 encoding sessions you have to buy an add-on for 19 $.

 

So I leave dbPowerAmp installed because of the usefull property tab, but for conversion I rather use CDex.

 

Now you might want to know, how the recorded audio files can be edited and cut. Well - once they have been converted to wav, any wave editor will do it - I use the Nero wave editor, that is part of Nero Burning ROM, for example. There are many possibilities... if you want to read some more suggestions, try this thread (it starts in German, but then continues in English).

 

Okay, that's all... happy audio recording and listening!

 

Griga

[plubsi]

another great tool is mp3trim(pro),its freeware.

you can cut silence and filtering something.But the best is to normalize and adjust volume in batchmodus.It`s very fast.

 

http://www.logiccell.com/~mp3trim/

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Burning and editing Audio : Feurio is a great Shareware,without restriction,only popups you have to kill

 

http://www.feurio.de

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Another Program to convert to any Audioformat is Beesweet.It handle ac3 too.It`s free.

 

http://www.schnerbel.de/index.php?action=d...etailKat_id=154

 

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Greeting Plubsi

[Klausing]

Hi all,

If you want to splitt mp3-files you can use MP3directCut http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch/mp3DirectCut.zip

You can set the beginn and the end of the new part where ever you want. And you can save this in an extra file. And one of the best is, you see the file as an optical graph. So you can start and end of the new file very accurate.

Its very simple to use it and its very fast. I splitted a mp3-file of 130MB (Der Herr der Ringe von DLF) in two files and cutted the reclame in only 3 Minutes.

cheers

Steffen