need program to compress mp3 files

G

glamrockchick

Registered
got an mp3 file of my practice on the radio and i want to email it to my friends and people to give their opinion, too big to email, tried creating new folder on the desktop and compressing it but still no good its 51.7MB

any programs i can use to compress it so it can fit into an email attachment?

thanks
 
You can use iTunes for this purpose. MP3 files can't actually be compressed. You can only reduce the bit rate, effectively removing audio frequencies from the file, until it reaches an acceptable size. For spoken word audio, you generally don't need more than 64 kbps. What is the bit rate of the existing file?

In iTunes preferences, you can choose Spoken Podcast or customize your settings to MP3 at 32, 48, or 64 kbps. Then, make an AAC or MP3 version (depending on your preferences) from the Advanced menu. Show the resulting file in the Finder to find it.

Alternatively, you could use a service for sending large files, such as Ge.tt, which will provide you a link you can send your recipients to download the file from Ge.tt's server.
 
Why not use split command? With it, you can split (hence the name) a file into smaller files. Send the files via email and your friend can put the files together into the MP3 file.

Start terminal.app and move to the directory where the file is. For example

Code: 
$ cd ~/Downloads
$ split -b 1000k thefile.mp3 thefile.
$ .. send the file
$ cat thefile.* > newfile.mp3

will create files with size of 1000 kilo bytes (about 1MB), named thefile.aa, thefile.ab, etc. Set the size suitable to your mail server. Then send the files, and tell your friend to put them back together. In OS X (and linux) cat can join the files back together.
 
MP3 is a lossy compressed audio format. Compressing MP3 files will case quality loss.

If you still want to compress MP3 files as well as don't want to lose much quality, Faasoft's great MP3 Compressor is a nice choise for both Mac and Windows users.
 
Glad to know that iTunes can do that, it did not bring up before. But did iTunes support mp3 as impot? Should I save MP3 to iTunes supported m4a beforehand?
 
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