Ok. I need help.
I’m calling on the collective wisdom of the readers of this blog.
I need to take the audio CD of my church’s weekly sermon, add a quick musical intro, tweak the bitrate to get it to a manageable size (in MB), and save as an MP3 so it can go on the church website. Simple enough? Tying it back to being a GeekDad, I want to be also be able to help my kids add a bit of audio to school projects (now that the school-year is here for my kids) when appropriate – you know…voice-overs and sound-effects for video projects and things like that….
I’ve tried
Audacity – see the graphic (a GREAT and flexible program), but I’m getting distortion a few minutes into the audio file that I can’t seem to get rid of….I’ve even tried different CDs with the same result – the distortion isn’t there on the CD or when I listen in Audacity, only when I save the file as an MP3. Doing a bit of research it seems to be a known issue in Audacity.
** Update ** — I’ve had a couple people ask what some of the specifics on my Audacity setup are. For the audiophiles, here you go:
- Audacity 1.2.6 w/ LAME encoder 3.97
- Project rate is set to 44100
- A WAV file of the recording sounds fine
- I’m exporting to MP3 with a sample rate of 22050 Hz (to help with the size)
So, I’m willing to go the commercial software route – I’m just clueless as I’m very, very new to this. I run a Windows system and am looking to spend less than $100 (if possible). The requirements:
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It needs to run on XP (hat tip to Mac fans – yes, this is very easy on a Mac –
I don’t have the cash for a Mac….it is after-all back-to-school time, so after new clothes, backpacks, school supplies, school fees, etc….I hope there’s enough money for gas in my Mini Cooper to get me to work….but I digress), -
it needs to let me set the bitrate and other typical settings,
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it needs to import the common audio file types,
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it needs to export to MP3 format.
Please leave a comment if you know of a software package that might work for doing what I’m trying to do and you’ve had experience with it. I’ll follow-up in a few weeks with the results. I’m also hoping to get this into a true podcast format for our church – which could come in useful if Chris and folks at Wired give us the go-ahead for a Geekdad podcast….stay tuned?
