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Recording a MP3

Things you should know about recording a MP3.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last dozen years or so, you've heard of MP3s as a way of distributing music. For the handfuls out there that have downloaded MP3s but don't know how they work, or how to record a MP3, here's the story in a nutshell.

MP3 is a music file format, sort of like .AIFF and .WAV; the acronym stands forMotion Picture Encoding Group, Audio Layer 3. The major advantage of MP3 audio is file compression; at CD-quality sound, most music worth listening to is between 9 and 12 megabytes per minute; the same music encoded in a high bit rate MP3 takes a factor of 12 reduction in file size, for a small reduction in audio quality. How small a reduction in audio quality? Well, it takes an audiophile grade set of headphones to really hear the difference, and if you use the highest bit rate sampling, even that won't get it for sure. The clever thing about MPEG as an encoding scheme is that it "compresses" selectively – it filters out most of the sounds that people don't notice.

MP3s are pretty much what makes the Apple iPod and other portable music players (even music players built into cell phones) a viable business. From a business perspective, recording a MP3 allows musicians to sell music directly to their fans, without going through the "middle management" layer of a record company.

Now, you still have to have a good sound, and good production values to make a MP3 file work right – like anything with music recording, the studio time, and the post production time, is critical to your success. In case it's been a while since you kicked it out in a studio, let's run through the basics.

Quality input determines the quality of your sound output. Quality input depends a lot on the recording environment; MP3's encoding means that a less than perfect recording will get significantly worse after digitization. So, make sure when recording a MP3, that the sound quality of your studio is as good as you can make it; it's worth it to spend the time to do some sample recordings and stamp out the dead spots.

Next to sound absorbers and reflectors on the walls to kill unwanted echoes, it's your microphone that drives your recording quality. Get good microphones; you'll want a good condenser microphone in front of your lead singer, and two dynamic range microphones near your instruments. Like anything that has to deal with music, as you get more experience, your microphone collection will grow. (In particular, mic’ing your drum kit is going to be a fascinating experience.)

Placement of your microphones for a good recording is a mixture of science and acoustics, and art – and is something you'll spend a lot time of trial and error. Take a look at general articles on studio setup to get the most out of this, and measure your recording area carefully. It's amazing what a couple of feet of placement can do. No one ever said recording a MP3 was going to be easy, but believe me, in the end … will be well worth the effort.

Once the gear is set up, decide how many tracks you plan on laying down. 4 is the minimum; fortunately, modern digital recording gear lets you do this with a heck of a lot less hassle and fuss than you'd expect even from five years ago. Apple's GarageBand software allows 12 tracks with trivial ease, and is a far cry from recording on 2" tape. As always, it's the time at the mixing boards that eats album creation. Look into setting your fades, and cross track and timing beats down early and work from within them.

Getting your recording from the studio equipment to your computer for MP3 conversions depends a lot on what you recorded it on. If you used MiniDisc, or most digital formats, then it's already on a hard drive and you can just use digital audio in to move it over. You'll either use an S/PDIF cable or a firewire cable for this, since the raw files are huge. If you're stuck with an analog recording, most sound cards have analog input. You're going to spend a lot of time cleaning up an analog signal going through your soundcard, and you need to be careful about clipping off the highs and flattening out the middles. It's almost always better to go straight digital across the board. Saves you time, gets a higher quality output, and is easier to deal with.

Once you've got your digital music down, it's time to rip it to a MP3. Now, MP3 as a format that doesn't support multi-track audio beyond stereo sound, so be sure to convert down to that when you've got it to the stage you need it at. You'll also need to select a bit rate, which is a measure of how much data is played per second, and directly impacts sound quality and file size.

If you're trying to capture CD-quality sound, lots of track overlays and a complex arrangement, look at 192 kb/sec. It's a large file size, but everything you want in the music will be in the download. Standard for most digital music is 144 or 128 kb/sec. If you're recording an interview with just people talking, or people reading text (such as an audio book), you can (with a good, quiet recording area) make a lot of progress with 64 kb/sec bit rates to kind of give you a comparison.

Hope this information helps you out when it comes to the do’s, don’ts and how-to’s of recording a MP3.