Audacity: Specify MP3 Bit Rate Quality (Mac OS X)

By the looks of it, and after having peeked at our stats here on WordPress.com over the last couple of postings, it appears as though our audience really does enjoy learning about our favorite free, open-source audio editing software, Audacity.  With good reason, too!  Audacity is a powerful piece of software for both Mac and PC which can easily take the place of others costing $50 or more.

In today’s posting, we will take our readers through the steps of rendering their audio project as an MP3 file using Audacity on Mac OS X, as well as specifying the quality (bit rate) of the file to be output.

First things first.

There are plenty of impostors out there on the web pushing their ‘free’ audio editing software.  Some may even tell you that it’s Audacity, but don’t be fooled.  There is one tried and true location to pick up your free download of Audacity, and that location has been, is and will continue to be in the foreseeable future http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.

Second things, second?

True, our readers should at this point have downloaded and installed Audacity on their computer’s hard drive in order to follow-along with this tutorial.  Here, we’ll assume that this has taken place along with the opening and editing of the file our readers wish to save as an MP3 with a specified quality (bit rate).  Let’s get started, shall we?

1. File >> Export

This will begin the process of rendering our project in a user-selected format; which in today’s walk-through will be the MP3 file type.

2. Save as type: MP3 >> Click “Options…”

This process will first tell the software that we’re looking to output our project in the MP3 format.  Clicking “Options…” allows us to set specific parameters for the file to be rendered to disk.

3. Click “Quality” drop-down menu >> Select desired bit rate >> Click “OK” >> Click “Save”

This process allows the user to select a pre-defined quality (bit rate) for the file to be rendered to disk. We’ve chosen 320 kbps, as it is the highest quality MP3 possible.

Hint: The larger the number, the higher the quality.  The lower, the poorer…

Once selected, click “OK” to confirm and “Save” to continue.

4. Edit Metadata >> OK.

Watch as your file exports at the desired quality (bit rate).

5. Pat yourself on the back >> Job well done!

Here we’ve quickly walked through the steps of saving an MP3 to our computer’s hard drive and specifying the MP3 bit rate (quality) using Audacity on Mac OS X.  Did you get stopped somewhere in the process?  Make sure you’ve got LAME correctly setup then shampoo, rinse and repeat the steps listed above.  Success will be yours!

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Coming up next … converting WAV to MP3 in Audacity (Mac OS X)!