3 Ways to Change Bitrate on MP3 Files

Want to change the bitrate of your MP3 files? This can be useful, for example, if you need to reduce the size of MP3 files. MP3 file at 320 kbps, the highest bit rate allowed for MP3 files can be reduced to 192 kbps to greatly reduce the size of the MP3 file.

There will be a loss in quality, but the difference will be negligible for most listeners using standard speakers or headphones. If you’re an audiophile, apart from expensive audio equipment, you’re probably never going to use the MP3 format.

You will most likely be using a lossless compressed or uncompressed format such as PCM Audio, WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, or APE. An uncompressed PCM audio file is about 10 times larger than a CD-quality MP3 file.

The MP3 format is a lossy format, which means that sound quality is sacrificed in order to keep files relatively small. Almost every site will tell you that you should never convert a lossless audio file to MP3 format unless you agree with the loss of audio quality.

This is almost always true. The only time it might make sense is if you have a lower bitrate audio file in a high quality format like WAV. For example, it makes sense to convert a 96kbps WAV file to MP3, but only if you choose 192kbps or higher. A higher bitrate of an MP3 file will allow it to retain the same quality as a WAV file, even though the bitrate is lower.

The second thing you’ll read is that you should never convert a lower bitrate stream to a higher bitrate stream and hope it sounds better. You cannot achieve quality by increasing the bitrate. This is absolutely correct. You will actually lower the quality of your MP3 file if you try to convert the bitrate.

If you want an MP3 with a higher bitrate than yours now, you need to go back to the source (CD, etc.) and extract that sound in full quality. Then you can convert this file to higher bitrate MP3 file.

The last thing you should know is that it is not recommended to convert between lossy formats as you will continue to lose quality. However, it is possible to convert lossless formats as long as the quality is preserved.

So now that you understand the basics of the best ways to convert audio files with different bitrates, let’s talk about programs that can help us. Please note that I have tested all of these programs with VirusTotal to make sure they are 100% clean.

MP3 quality rate

MP3 Quality Modifier is a small free Windows program that is easy to use and works very well. When installed, it also contains no malware or useless suggestions.

What I love about this program is that it doesn’t even need to be installed, you can simply run it by opening the EXE file. At startup, a small welcome window appears and explains how to use the program, which is nice.

To get started, simply click the Add Files or Add Folder button at the top. This program only works with MP3 files, so if you want to convert a WAV or FLAC file to MP3, check out the other programs mentioned below.

By default, it chooses a bitrate of 130 kbps, which is average quality. It also lists the size, bit rate, mode and sample rate for the added MP3 files. As mentioned, this program makes sense if you are moving from a higher bitrate to a lower one.

You can also click Presets and choose from various options such as Best Quality, High Quality, Portability, etc.

AmoK MP3 re-encode

Another free encoder you can use is AmoK MP3 ReEncoder, which can accept MP3, FLAC, or WAV as input. You can also launch this program by simply double-clicking the EXE file.

Once launched, you need to download the LAME encoder, which is downloaded separately. You can download the latest version 3.95.5 from the RareWares page

Please note that there are several options. The first is for 32-bit Windows, the second is for 64-bit, and so on. If you need to convert FLAC files, you need to download the 4th, which says it supports FLAC and OGG input support.

Once you’ve downloaded and unzipped the files, go to ReEncoder and click File and then Options.

In the Lame section, click on the little frame with three dots and navigate to the folder with the lame.exe file you just downloaded. Click “OK” and then be sure to select an output directory.

The default profile will be 192 kbps, but you can click the Profiles button and create a new profile.

Then you can select the bitrate and adjust it using the slider. Once you’ve selected your settings, click the Add Files or Add Folder button to add audio files.

Click the “Start” button and a small progress bar and a window will appear showing how long it will take.

The only problem with this program was that I was unable to get it to convert the WAV file to MP3 file. For some reason, when I selected the WAV file, it just didn’t do anything. I may have configured it incorrectly, but if you need to convert from WAV to MP3, check out the latest program below that worked.

Fre: ac – free audio converter

Fre: ac is another open source project that has the most options for converting between audio formats. It includes multiple encoders by default so you don’t need to download separate files for WAV, FLAC, etc.

Once installed and launched, click File, then Add, and then Add Files.

Then click “Options” and click “General Settings”.

Here the main setting is the encoder. By default, this is LAME MP3 Encoder, which can be used to convert other audio formats to MP3 format. However, if you want to convert your audio file to FLAC, OGG, WAV or BONK formats, just select the appropriate encoder.

Then click Configure Encoder to change the LAME MP3 encoder settings. By default it will be set to “Standard”, “Fast”, which does not give you a very high quality MP3 file.

In the Use preset section, change it to Custom settings. Now you can choose from VBR, ABR and CBR. It is a standard for variable, average, or constant data rates. For the best quality, you’ll want to use CBR, which also means your MP3 file will be slightly larger.

Then you can adjust the bitrate to your desired value and also adjust the quality. The higher the setting, the better the sound quality, but the larger the file size.

Click OK twice to return to the main screen and then click the Play button at the top to begin the encoding process. In my example, I converted a 6 minutes 45 seconds 68 MB WAV file to a 12 MB 256 kbps MP3 file using this program. If you choose the default settings, you will get a 4MB MP3 file

Hopefully this gives you a good idea of ??what bitrate is and how you can tweak it depending on what kind of audio file you have. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to comment. Enjoy!

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