Sound editing program

quovadis13

So, my girlfriend just got a voice recorder for her ipod to record lectures. The thing works great except that the file sizes are absolutely huge (like 500 MB for an hour). The recorder saves the lectures as .wav files. I was wondering if you guys knew of any software (preferably free) that could be used to take these files and reduce their size without lowering their quality too much.

Thanks for the help

LewieP

Audacity should do the job.

quovadis13

Thanks alot!!! This program is pretty neat. Do you happen to have any tips on how to use it properly for this kind of procedure?? I figured out the basics, but any help would be awesome.

ikillkenny

I've never really gotten used to the interface of Audacity. I prefer Goldwave, which is not free, although it offers a demo that lets you pretty much do anything for quite a long time. It's only like $50 to buy it if you end up liking it.

But Audacity will probably work for you and most other people's audio editting purposes.

EvilBadman

1. Download the LAME Codec
2. In there is a lame_enc.dll. When you click Export as .mp3, audacity needs to be pointed to it. I put that file in my Audacity/Plug-Ins folder for ease.
3. Convert to Mp3.

That should help the size.

Dírhael

1. Download the Nero Digital Audio Encoder (freeware command line tool).
2. Extract the file named "neroAacEnc.exe" to your "c:\windows" folder.
3. Open a command promt in the folder where you have your *.wav files saved.
4. Type: neroAacEnc -br 96000 -lc -if "nameofwavefile.wav" -of "yourpreferedfilename.aac"

You can change the bitrate if you prefer, but 96Kbps is more than enough for voice recordings and gives you really small files with good sound quality. MP3 is a good codec as well, but at low bitrates AAC is *much* better.

scootch

use Cdex, download the lame codec linked by evilbadman, open the wav file in cdex, click on convert wav file to compressed file.


http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

ZackSchilling

My goodness, so many complex answers, so many things to download. Overkill.

If she has iTunes (which I assume she does, since, you know, she has an iPod and doesn't already know how to convert audio), you just open iTunes, right click on the recording and hit "convert to XXX", where XXX is the format (MP3, AAC, WAV, Lossless, etc) that you chose in the encoding preferences. It really doesn't get any easier.

Jazz

Looks like I'm seriously late to this party, but I have to throw in a recommendation for WavePad. I do all the editing and file conversion for the 360Arcadians podcast in it; everything, in fact, bar the actual recording. And I'd use it for that too if it could pick up the incoming channel from Skype.

Excellent interface, very flexible, easy to use and has excellent-quality MP3 encoding. The shareware edition only has very minor gimps, too. If it had a real-time mixer I'd fall to my knees and worship it like a deity. I love it.

But, yeah, iTunes is a two-click solution. ;-)

Dírhael

ZackSchilling wrote: »

My goodness, so many complex answers, so many things to download. Overkill.

If she has iTunes (which I assume she does, since, you know, she has an iPod and doesn't already know how to convert audio), you just open iTunes, right click on the recording and hit "convert to XXX", where XXX is the format (MP3, AAC, WAV, Lossless, etc) that you chose in the encoding preferences. It really doesn't get any easier.

You know, some people (like me) might argue that getting your system tainted by iTunes could also be considered overkill... Anyway, you don't need that trainwreck of an application if you need a "two-click" solution. If you're using Foobar 2000 as you player of choice, just right-click the file and select convert (again, MP3 is a bad solution for low-bitrate voice recordings. Using AAC/MP4 will give you the best quality at the lowest filesize).

leaf

I used cool edit, but mostly that was for making sounds playable over mic in css.

Technicality

Oggdrop is a pretty simple solution.
Drag and drop .wav files onto it, and it turns them into .ogg

Recoil42

Dìrhael wrote: »

ZackSchilling wrote: »

My goodness, so many complex answers, so many things to download. Overkill.

If she has iTunes (which I assume she does, since, you know, she has an iPod and doesn't already know how to convert audio), you just open iTunes, right click on the recording and hit "convert to XXX", where XXX is the format (MP3, AAC, WAV, Lossless, etc) that you chose in the encoding preferences. It really doesn't get any easier.

You know, some people (like me) might argue that getting your system tainted by iTunes could also be considered overkill... Anyway, you don't need that trainwreck of an application if you need a "two-click" solution. If you're using Foobar 2000 as you player of choice, just right-click the file and select convert (again, MP3 is a bad solution for low-bitrate voice recordings. Using AAC/MP4 will give you the best quality at the lowest filesize).

Except, you know, she already probably has iTunes if she has an iPod, as Zack said, so that's actually the MOST minimalist way. Lern 2 reed.

And iTunes, "trainwreck" of an application?

...are you trying to incite something? That's called trolling, you know.

Pajama_Man

Goldwave's great...and cheap!

Dírhael

Recoil42 wrote: »

Dìrhael wrote: »

ZackSchilling wrote: »

My goodness, so many complex answers, so many things to download. Overkill.

If she has iTunes (which I assume she does, since, you know, she has an iPod and doesn't already know how to convert audio), you just open iTunes, right click on the recording and hit "convert to XXX", where XXX is the format (MP3, AAC, WAV, Lossless, etc) that you chose in the encoding preferences. It really doesn't get any easier.

You know, some people (like me) might argue that getting your system tainted by iTunes could also be considered overkill... Anyway, you don't need that trainwreck of an application if you need a "two-click" solution. If you're using Foobar 2000 as you player of choice, just right-click the file and select convert (again, MP3 is a bad solution for low-bitrate voice recordings. Using AAC/MP4 will give you the best quality at the lowest filesize).

Except, you know, she already probably has iTunes if she has an iPod, as Zack said, so that's actually the MOST minimalist way. Lern 2 reed.

And iTunes, "trainwreck" of an application?

...are you trying to incite something? That's called trolling, you know.

Am I trying to incite something? No, I'm not. However, any music player that starts installing services into my OS without my consent (it doesn't even remove the service by uninstalling iTunes) earns a somewhat negative label from me. I also happen to think that an application this "big/large/slow" is overkill for anyone not using the music store. If all you need is a player/library, there are better options available.

Oh and I also don't think one should always assume that people have iTunes installed just because they own an iPod. I have one and don't have it installed, and neither does anyone I know.

Jazz

Dìrhael wrote: »

Oh and I also don't think one should always assume that people have iTunes installed just because they own an iPod. I have one and don't have it installed, and neither does anyone I know.

I do. :P