MP3 settings bitrate for sermon audio

[buggyboy]

The posts I could find on this topic are from 2007 or earlier and not perfectly explicit.

My situation:

I'm recording our sermons using reaper, and saving as a wav file that usually is about 300 Mb in size. (The sermons are generally about 30-45 minutes long).

There is no music, just the pastor speaking.

Primary issue: I need to figure out what mp3 settings you all have settled on as being good enough for sermon audio.

Or: should I use wma rather than mp3? If o, what settings?

Also: will saving as a mono file run the risk of only being heard through one earphone?

Sorry for the scatterbrained-ness here...It is waaay too late.
Thanks!

[pdc]

MP3s, even with the best codec are nearly 50% distortion, so for archival purposes, I keep everything in wav format. Drives are cheap. There is no excuse IMO to ever go to MP3. If you REALLY cannot afford a $50 250GB drive, then I would go no lower than 320kbps. If it is radio bound, you can get by with 192 through a great codec, because that is what all radio stuff nowadays goes to when it is ripped into the playback/program software in their computers anyway. But, for archive, "keep it real" .

[bladeaudio]

For upload to the web we use 64kbps.

Using mono doesn't mean only one earphone will be heard. It means the same thing will be heard in both earphones. Stereo means you have unique signals in each earphone.

[daver2]

What are you then using the mp3 files for?

We record using Audiologic on a MAC. We export to MP3 files using Audacity. For some reason the 'Lame' mp3 codec 'sounds' better. Because we only store the sermon on the webpage - and download speed is important to us - we opt for a fairly crude 20 odd kHz sample rate. This is about as low as we can go without the preacher sounding like Donald Duck! Don't ever try and compress music to this level though...

Dave

[Jay M]

Originally Posted by bladeaudio

For upload to the web we use 64kbps.

Using mono doesn't mean only one earphone will be heard. It means the same thing will be heard in both earphones. Stereo means you have unique signals in each earphone.

64kbps was what we also determined was the best compromise of size vs quality. We also offer a very low quality 16kbps size for dial-up people.

Mono sounds better than stereo because your bit rate gets a little bit reduced in stereo. You don't lose 50%, but there is a significant degradation when you encode in stereo.

Use MP3 because everything can play it. I don't even know if an iPod can play WMA.

~Jay

[Jay M]

I should add that I do a lot of mastering to make the sermon sound good before I encode to MP3. I use a high and low pass filter, noise reduction, EQ, compression and limiting.

The high and low pass filter combined with noise reduction clean up the sermon so the precious few bits in the MP3 only have to be used for the sermon... not the noise.

~Jay

[buggyboy]

Thanks everyone.

My plan had been to store one year worth of sermons on the computer in wav format, then at the end of the year put them all on to a dvd... using the minimum compression needed to make them all fit.

(250Mb per sermon...52 sundays = 104 sermons....=~26 Gb for the year of sermons)

If others had already done the comparisons and found ,say, above 192 added no significant quality... that would save me from doing the test myself.


Meanwhile, if our web ministry takes off I'll work on making a 64 version for upload.

Any other settings I'm missing? sampling frequency?

Right now I'm burning cds on request using windows media player...any better / simpler programs that you recommend?

thanks again

[Jay M]

Sorry, I forgot that important detail... 64 kbps at 44.1 kHz, or 16 kbps at 11 kHz.

You should definitely archive as a .wav file. Storage is very cheap now. When we started out 40 years ago, recording was only intended for shut-ins. Because they chose to use high quality equipment back then, those recordings are good enough to use for broadcast today. That was a good lesson for me to learn today. You don't know what people will do with those sermons down the road, but it's safe to treat them as if they will still be useful to a future generation.

For making CDs, use what ever you prefer. We use a bunch of automated duplicators to produce the 10,000 per month that we sell. Another ministry that I work with uses a CD tower for recording and an automated printer for labels. They produce about 1200 CDs per month that are given away, they accept donations to pay for it.

In both cases we use Wavelab mastering software to edit, master, and create the master CD.

~Jay

[pdc]

CDs...we don't use those anymore. MP3 for distribution. Email is cheaper than the cost of blank media and maintaining the cost of the the machine. You guys need to watch the trends. Many major labels will not be releasing on CD in a year. Train your customers now.

[Jay M]

Our customers are a bit slow. It was less than a year ago that we stopped making cassettes! We did all we could to discourage cassette sales, we didn't offer them on our web site, we charged more for them than CDs, and we never mentioned them on our broadcast. People still called in to request them. Finally sales slowed down enough that we could stop producing them without offending too many customers.

For CDs, I don't know what will happen. A few years ago we made an MP3 version of all the CD titles free, but almost as many people still buy CDs.

I agree, that I would not begin a CD ministry today if I didn't need to!

~Jay

[tropicalfish]

For web distribution I use MP3 VBR V9 (the lowest variable setting) and 16000 or 24000kHz sampling rate. Files range from 8 to 15 MB depending on sermon length.

[Jay M]

Originally Posted by tropicalfish

For web distribution I use MP3 VBR V9 (the lowest variable setting) and 16000 or 24000kHz sampling rate. Files range from 8 to 15 MB depending on sermon length.

I've heard that variable is better, but haven't tried it myself. Do you have any compatibility problems? My fear early on was that variable might not be compatible with every device.

~Jay