As you can see from the below post, I’ve found a way to take take audio clips of Stephen Bennett’s show and save them for the ages. Bennett’s own public audio archives only provide the last week of programming for free.
Here’s the technical problem I’m having. My mac’s sound recording utility records his show in AIFF format. I’m looking for recommendations of a sound editing program (for mac) that allows me to easily edit and convert that AIFF into MP3 or other bandwidth thrifty file format. As you can see from the below post I managed to save it in MP3 but the file size is unnecessarily large for the sound quality I got. Small file size is a priority over audio quality.
daniel@exgaywatch.com
I believe Audacity has a Mac version. It’s free, fairly powerful, and offers a variety of formats, including MPG, WMA, AIFF. I’ve used it for several years on Windows, but I’m also a Mac user.
Audacity is an open-source program, I believe I found it originally on sourceforge or a similar site. Hope that helps.
That’s actually what I have but I have no clue how to use it.
Audacity would definitely do it.CTRL+Click on your AIFF file and choose Open With->Audacity. Go to Preferences->File FormatsAdjust the “bit rate” under “MP3 Export Setup” to something small, to reduce filesize. Voice seems to become unrecognizable below 64, so I reccomend not going lower than that.Hit “OkayGo to File->Export as MP3Save your mp3 file.You’re done!
The only kink in this might be that you do not have the LAME mp3 encoder installed. A tutorial for installing LAME is located here.
Alternatively, open up Garageband, make a new Real Instrument track, drag your AIFF file onto it, and hit “export to iTunes.” That will export a 192kbps mp3 file into your itunes, from which you can publish or do what you like.
Finally, you could use Audio Hijack with the pro version. It might be overkill, but it’s only $16 if you already own Audio Hijack ($32 total), and it does mp3 exports and allows you to pick quality and other settings to reduce filesizes.
On a completely random note, this headline is priceless:
https://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/2/62006c.asp
I vote for Audacity as well though I use it on Windows. It should be basically the same on a Mac and the instructions above are good. I’ve done a lot of great work on Audacity. If you think I can help let me know.
David
Agius you rock, that’s exactly the sort of step-by-step I was looking for. The AIFF file I put in is stereo however and I could really get by with mono, how do I make that change?
Oh and I’ve got the LAME encoder already thanks.