Want to change the bitrate on your MP3 files? This can be useful if you need to reduce the size of your MP3 files, for example. A MP3 file at 320 kbps, the highest bitrate allowed for MP3 files, could be reduced to 192 kbps in order to significantly reduce the size of the MP3 file.
There would be a loss of quality, but the difference would be negligible to most listeners using standard speakers or headphones. If you’re an audiophile, then in addition to having expensive audio equipment, you’re probably never going to use the MP3 format anyway.
Most likely you’ll be using a compressed or uncompressed lossless format like PCM Audio, WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, or APE. An uncompressed PCM audio file is about 10 times bigger than a CD quality MP3 file.
The MP3 format is a lossy format, which means audio quality is sacrificed in order to keep the relatively small size of the files. Pretty much every site will tell you that you should never convert a lossless format audio file to MP3 format unless you are OK with losing some audio quality.
This is true almost all of the time. 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 might make sense to convert a 96 kbps WAV file to MP3, but only if you choose a bitrate of 192 kbps or higher. The higher bitrate on the MP3 file will allow it to maintain the same quality as the WAV file, even though it is a lower bitrate.
The second thing you’ll read is that you should never convert a lower bitrate stream to a higher bitrate stream and hope that it sounds better. You cannot gain quality by increasing the bitrate. This is exactly correct. You will actually reduce the quality of your MP3 file if you try to convert up the bitrate.
If you want a higher bitrate MP3 than you currently have, you need to go back to the source (CD, etc) and extract that audio at full quality. Then you can convert that file into a higher bitrate MP3 file.
The last thing you should know is that it is not advisable to convert between lossy formats as you will continue to loss quality. It is OK, however, to convert between lossless formats as the quality is retained.
So now that you understand a few of the basics of the best ways to convert audio files to different bitrates, let’s talk about the programs that can help us. Note that I checked all of these programs on VirusTotal to make sure they are 100% clean.
MP3 Quality Modifier
MP3 Quality Modifier is a small freeware program for Windows that is simple to use and works very well. It also doesn’t contain any malware or useless offers when installing it.
What I like about this program is that it doesn’t even require any installation, you can just run it by opening the EXE file. On startup, it gives you a little welcome window and explains how to use the program, which is nice.
To get started, just click on the Add Files or Add Folder buttons at the top. This program only works with MP3 files, so if you are looking to convert a WAV or FLAC file into MP3, check out more of the programs mentioned below.
By default, it picks a bitrate of 130 kbps, which is about medium quality. It also lists out the size, bitrate, modus and sample frequency for the MP3 files you have added. As mentioned, this program make sense if you are converting from a higher to lower bitrate.
You can also click on Presets and choose from different options like Best Quality, High Quality, Portable, etc.
AmoK MP3 ReEncoder
Another free encoder you can use is AmoK MP3 ReEncoder, which can take MP3, FLAC or WAV as inputs. You can also run this program by just double-clicking on the EXE file.
Once you have it running, you need to download the LAME encoder, which is a separate download. You can download the latest version, 3.95.5, from the RareWares page.
Note that there are a couple of options. The first one is for 32-bit Windows, the second is for 64-bit, etc. If you need to convert FLAC files, you need to download the 4th one that says it supports FLAC and OGG input support.
Once you have that downloaded and unzipped the files, go to the ReEncoder program and click on File and then Options.
Under Lame, click on the little box with three dots and then navigate to the location of the lame.exe file you just downloaded. Click OK and then make sure to choose an Output directory also.
The default profile will have a bitrate of 192 kbps, but you can click the Profiles button and create a new profile.
You can then select Bitrate and adjust it using the slider. Once you have the settings chosen, click the Add Files or Add Folder button to add your audio files.
Click the Start button and a little progress bar and window will appear showing you how long it will take.
The only issue with this program was that I was not able to get it to convert a WAV file into an MP3 file. For whatever reason, it just didn’t do anything when I chose a WAV file. Maybe I configured it incorrectly, but if you need to convert from WAV to MP3, check out the last program below, which 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 several encoders by default, so you don’t have to go and download separate files for WAV, FLAC, etc.
Once you install and run it, click on File, then Add and then Add files.
Next, click on Options and click on General Settings.
Here the main setting is the encoder. By default, it is the LAME MP3 Encoder, which you can use to convert other audio formats into MP3 format. However, if you want to convert an audio file to FLAC, OGG, WAV or BONK, just select the appropriate encoder.
Next, click on Configure Encoder to change the settings for the LAME MP3 encoder. By default, it’s going to be set to Standard, Fast, which doesn’t give you a very high quality MP3 file.
Under Use preset, change it to Custom setttings. Now you can pick from VBR, ABR and CBR. These standard for Variable, Average or Constant Bit Rate. For the best quality, you’re going to want to go with CBR, which also means your MP3 file will be a bit larger.
You can then adjust the bitrate to the desired value and also adjust the quality too. The higher the setting, the better quality sound, but the bigger the file.
Click OK a couple of times to get back to the main screen and then click on the Play button at top to start the encoding process. In my example, I converted a 6 min 45 sec 68 MB WAV file to a 12 MB 256 kbps MP3 file using this program. If you go with the default settings, you’ll get a 4 MB MP3 file.
Hopefully, this gives you a good overview of what bitrate is and how you can adjust it depending on what kind of audio file you have. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!
Nov 19, 2015 09:18 am | Aseem Kishore | MS Office Tips
Insert an Excel Worksheet into a Word Doc
Ever need to insert an Excel worksheet into a Word document and have them linked so that when you update the main Excel worksheet, it automatically updates the values in the Word document also?
Well, there are actually a couple of ways to insert an Excel spreadsheet into Word: linking, embedding and creating a new one. Whether you embed or link, the inserted Excel spreadsheet will not automatically get updated unless you specifically create the link between the two files.
Once linked, however, then the data in the embedded or linked spreadsheet will update whenever changes are detected in the originating Excel spreadsheet.
In addition to inserting an existing Excel spreadsheet, you can also insert a new Excel object into Word, which basically runs Excel inside of Word itself.
In this article, I will show you how to do it using all three methods and explain what you need to do in order to create the link.
Copy Paste Method
Let’s start off with the first method, which is basically just copying and pasting from Excel into Word. Note that when using this method, you have the option to include only a part of the Excel spreadsheet in the Word document. In the second method, inserting an object, the entire spreadsheet will be placed into the Word file.
Step 1: Select the area in your Excel spreadsheet that you want to include in Word and then press Ctrl + C to copy the contents.
Step 2: Now go to your Word document and press Ctrl + V to paste the contents into the Word file. In order to link, you have to click on the Paste Options button at the bottom right and choose either Match Destination Table Style and Link to Excel or Keep Source Formatting and Link to Excel.
In newer versions of Word, you’ll see several icons. You can hover over them and you’ll find the same two options as mentioned above.
Step 3: That's it, now your table will be linked to the original Excel file. Whenever you update the Excel file and reopen Word, Word will ask you if you want to update the doc with the new data from the linked files.
Step 4: Click Yes and your table will reflect the new values. If you have both files open at the same time, you'll see the changes live.
There is obviously some pretty complicated mechanism that makes all of this work, but thankfully you don’t have to worry about it. It just works! Note that if you just copy and paste and don’t choose one of the linking options, you’ll just have a stand-alone Excel object inserted that won’t be updated when changes are made in the original Excel file.
Also, using this method, you can’t edit the Excel data in Word and have it reflect back to the Excel spreadsheet. It only works one way. If you make changes to the data in Word and save the file, you will get the same message above asking if you want to update the file from the linked files when you go to open the file again.
If you click Yes, it will simply reload the latest values from the Excel spreadsheet and overwrite whatever values you may have changed. If you want to edit the original Excel spreadsheet, you can do it from Word by right-clicking on the data, clicking on Linked Worksheet Object and then clicking on Edit Link.
This is useful if someone else created this Word document and you don’t know the location of the original Excel file.
Insert Object Method
The second way to link an Excel spreadsheet to Word is by using the Insert menu.
Step 1: In Word, click on the Insert tab, click on the Object dropdown and then choose Object.
Step 2: Click on the Create from File tab and click on the Browse button to choose your file.
Step 3: Once you choose the file, you will see two check boxes at the right side. If you want to link the Excel spreadsheet, you need to check Link to file. If you want to insert the spreadsheet so that it is not linked to the original file, then don't check the box.
As mentioned previously, using the Insert Object method will dump the entire contents of the Excel spreadsheet into Word rather than just a portion.
Note that if you were to double-click on the Excel object (if linked), then it will simply open up the original Excel file in Excel itself.
Insert Table Method
Lastly, you can insert a fully editable Excel spreadsheet into Word by going to the Insert tab, clicking on Table and then clicking on Excel Spreadsheet at the bottom.
This method is only useful if you want to create a new Excel spreadsheet from scratch and you plan on making changes to the spreadsheet from within Word itself. What’s cool about this method, though, is that it’ll insert a floating spreadsheet and load the entire Excel menu too inside Word, so you can insert formulas, etc just as if you were in Excel itself.
You can add sheets, create filters, format cells and do everything just like the normal Excel. It’s a quick and easy way to insert some data into a Word document that you can format properly using Excel rather than relying on Word tables, which are really hard to make look nice.
So those are all the different ways you can get an Excel spreadsheet into Word and have them linked or not linked, depending on your needs. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!
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