

These controls determine how the two channels of a stereo MP3 are encoded or if the exported MP3 should always be mono. The bit rates are absolute for average and constant bit rate modes, but expressed as a range for the variable and preset modes (except for the Insane preset). A higher bit rate always gives better quality but at the expense of a larger file size and vice versa. This list lets you select the bit rate in kbps (kilobits per second) for encoding your file. This will still sound the same on stereo equipment, but have higher quality because the fixed number of bits have less audio to process. If you are exporting a constant bit rate spoken word MP3 such as an audiobook and have a stereo track in Audacity where both channels are identical, it is preferable to use Tracks > Mix > Mix Stereo down to Mono to convert to a single mono track before export. This does not provide as consistently high a quality as variable bit rate, but is generally preferable to constant bit rate if you need to know more or less how large your files will be it offers bit rates from 8 kbps to 320 kbps. Average: This sets a known, average bit rate for the file, but within this average permits some fluctuations in bit rate to reflect the relative difficulty of encoding the file.It will tend to give you somewhat smaller file sizes for a given degree of quality, but the actual file sizes cannot be accurately predicted in advance. Variable bit rate offers the best quality compared to the Average and Constant bit rate options in most circumstances (extremely quiet music is one exception). Level 0 is comparable to the Extreme preset mentioned above, level 2 is comparable to Standard and level 4 to Medium presets. For a mono track, the achieved bit rate for each setting will usually be below the range indicated above.
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Each setting defines a range of bit rates within which it will generally operate, assuming a stereo track. The settings range from 0 (highest quality) to 9 (smallest file size).

Audacity uses LAME Mp3 info tag to store the exact length of added silence. Note that MP3 files have a short silence at the beginning due to encoder delay. Encoding speed can be specified, and Joint Stereo encoding chosen as an option.Īs with all lossy, compressed formats, there is a trade-off between the size of the file and the quality of the encoded file, higher quality requiring larger files. You can choose between variable, average or constant bit rate, or from one of four common presets. MP3 Export Options let you choose the quality of files exported to the popular MP3 format.
