Lewies Blog

I decided to look into audio blogger today. I saw that they had a 7-day free trial and that you could upload WAV files to be converted to MP3. I created an account and uploaded my file. It turns out that the conversion results were the same as what I had when using LAME on my local computer. I fired off a support message to the staff.

When I upload a WAV file, your sevice converts it to an MP3, but all I hear is static. Am I limited to certain audio codecs that WAV files can be in? I use an olympus w-10 digital voice recorder when I am away from my computer and it records WAV files.

* Bit Rate: 88kbps
* Audio sample size: 4 bit
* Channels: 1 (mono)
* Audio sample rate: 22 kHz
* Audio format: IMA ADPCM

Thanks for any help you can send my way.

I started looking on the internet for audio encoders. I figured maybe my codec was wrong or was missing all together. I found a program called ImTOO MPEG Encoder. I was only $35 bucks and appeared to have a free trial.

I downloaded the program and couldn’t do any conversions. It complained that I didn’t have a license and that I would only be able to encode the first 5 minutes. The problem was that it wouldn’t even encode 5 minutes. It looked pretty robust so I was going to make the purchase. When I was in the middle of filling out the billing information, I got an email from the Audio Blogger staff.

Hi there,

Presuming you’re using Windows, load the audio up in Sound Recorder and
then
export as 22khz mono PCM and it should work fine.

If you’re on a Mac, download Audacity for free from
http://audacity.sourceforge.net and
export as an MP3.

Regards,
Randy
Audioblog.com

I started going through the steps and saved the file. I played it first just to make sure the audio was still intact. I then tried encoding it with LAME to an MP3 and it worked! I then uploaded it through audio blogger and it worked there as well.

I was happy that I got a response very quickly, and that it solved my problem. All this on a weekend! The WAV file is about four times bigger in size with the new format. Since I can upload MP3 audio as well, I can convert it with LAME first to be a third of the original WAV file size that I started out with.

Original WAV (IMA ADPCM): 1,839 KB
New WAV (PCM): 7,265 KB
MP3: 659 KB

I canceled my order for ImTOO MPEG Encoder.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 16th, 2005 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.