MP3 converters/encoder

[nickstetina]

i record with pro tools and in the session everything sounds great. then once i render it to wav. it sounds pretty good but not as good and then once it gets to mp3 it sounds like it was recorded in a different place.

im aware of bit rates and the sample rates and such but im just wonderin i anyone knows of a really good mp3 converter/encoder?

[scheid]

There are so many mp3 encoders out there; hard to say which is best. I also think there are legal issues with a software app calling itself an 'mp3 encoder'; not totally sure about that.

Are you doing your raw recording at 96KHz in Pro Tools? That may be why it doesn't sound as good after you render the final wav file, as that final wav is probably 44.1KHz. 96KHz will sound much brighter and cleaner.

I have always used the Blade mp3 encoder which has worked great. Go to http://bladeenc.mp3.no/ and click on the 'download' link on the left side. It's not formally supported anymore, but encoders like LAME (http://lame.sourceforge.net/) are good too. As far as bit rates go, I would not encode at less than 192 if you want decent sound quality. I do all of mine at 256, which makes for big files, but that's fine with me. Some sites that you post mp3's on have file size limits or exact bit rates that they want, so you may want to just make a few different mp3's, each with different bit rates, of the same song. One note about a lot of the encoders is that you have to be a bit of a computer geek to use them by themselves.

A CD ripper called CDEx (http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/) actually will let you add your own wav files to be converted to mp3, and you can choose the mp3 encoder of your choice. That might be easier for you if you don't want to muck with the 'computer geek' method.

Here is an interesting article that compares mp3 encoder performance at various bit rates: http://arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/1q00/mp3/mp3-1.html . This article really shows that after you get above a bit rate of 192, most mp3 encoders perform fairly well.