Hi all! Often when I download audiobooks, they come as lots and lots of mp3 files. Often the mp3 files are much higher quality than is needed for audiobooks, bloating files when space is precious on the ipod... So in this situation I want to to the following: Merge the files to 6-7 hour m4a or mp4 files (I later change them to .m4b) Set the bitrate to something reasonable for an audiobook, like 48 kbps for instance. I have been using "Total Audio Converter" and AVS Audio Converter but I am not convinced they are the best tools for this. I have a feeling the quality could be better... Does anyone know of better tools for what I want to do?
I use dbPowerAmp as the converter since it is the best I convert to mp3 (Lame Averate Bit Rate 40) You might be able to further deduce the bit rate by going to aa format I can’t see why you would want to concatenate the chapters. It serves no purpose but adds another process to your audio and extra work for you. Why put it inside a m4a or mp4 container? That again serves no purpose and limits what you can play it on. You can’t continue to process lossy files without effecting their quality. If you are lucky, you only suffer a loss of fidelity, if not you can produce artifacts. Most will render your audio unusable since they are very loud and can hurt your ears and or blow out your speakers. For that reason I convert to mp3 since most devices play them. For instance, I cut a ape file into tracks. They sounded perfect. Then I converted them to mp3s. The audios were riddled with horrible artifacts. Then I tried converting the ape file to an mp3 file then cut that into tracks and the audio was fine. The thing is, had I kept the ape tracks and deleted the original one I would never have been able to reduce the bit rate. You can’t always hear if you have ruined an audio file until you try to peocess it again. I suggect doing as little as possible to any audio file.
