Top mp3 frequently asked interview questions

What is the quickest, easiest way to compress an MP3 file?

I would like to compress an MP3 file, and I see a lot of references when searching Google, but it seems like by now someone must have found something easy and that is guaranteed to work.

Compressing an MP3 file into a ZIP archive doesn't compress the file enough, but I am also concerned about too much loss of audio quality.

What is the experience with this?

Source: (StackOverflow)

Is there a command line MP3 player for Windows? [closed]

Is there a command line MP3 player for Windows? It needs to support CJK filenames.

I have tried the following so far:

mpg123: doesn't have the ability to pause/fast forward/backward.
MpxPlayer: does not support CJK filenames.

Source: (StackOverflow)

Any beat detection software for Linux?

Amarok 2 can search through music collection using ID3v2 tag's 'bpm' field. That would be very nice to retag the entire music collection so I can find the 'mood' of the track I like.

However I've not found any beat-detection software that could have helped me. Have you ever used one? CLI, preferably. Also I'm interested if there's anything alike for tagging FLACs with the same 'bpm' field.

Thanks! :)

P.S. I'm aware there's a nice moodbar feature, however it's useless for searching.

Source: (StackOverflow)

How to convert 3gp audio file to mp3?

I have a 3gp audio file recorded with my Android cellphone.

I would like to convert it to mp3, preferably on Linux, but Windows also an option.

Any recommendations?

Source: (StackOverflow)

Get MP3 Length in Linux / FreeBSD

I have a bunch of mp3 files with various length. I want to cut it down to 50%-60% length. Says, from 1 minute down to 30 seconds. It should be trivial using ffmpeg. But, I don't know how to determine the original length of it as a base for processing using ffmpeg.

Anyone have an idea?

Source: (StackOverflow)

Is there a tool that can detect (and if possible, fix) glitches in MP3 files?

My collection contains some MP3s which have some glitches like:

displaying the wrong duration on loading
minor jumps
suddenly ending despite the duration claims another minute remaining
noise

I'm looking for a tool that can detect as many of these glitches as possible and fix those that can be fixed (obviously e.g. noise can not simply be eliminated in most cases).

Source: (StackOverflow)

Speech recognition - MP3 to text software [on hold]

I'm looking for a speaker independent program (commercial or free) that would enable me to transcribe MP3 files containing speech recordings (especially podcasts) to text. I wanted to try Dragon Naturally Speaking, but it seems like it only supports transcribing my own speech recordings. So what are the alternatives?

Source: (StackOverflow)

FFmpeg command to convert MP3 to AAC

I can issue this command:

ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -acodec alac -ab 128k -ar 48000 -ac 2 -y output.m4a

to create a m4a file.

But when I issue this command

ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -acodec alac -ab 128k -ar 48000 -ac 2 -y output.aac

ffmpeg is throwing an error saying

Could not write header for output file #0 (incorrect codec parameters ?).

Also, the size of the m4a file is really almost 5.8 times larger than the original file, which is absolutely not what I wanted and why I wanted to convert to AAC.

Source: (StackOverflow)

Is there an easy way to split mp3 files?

I recently learned a neat trick. To join mp3 files together, you simply use the command (in Windows)

copy /b *.mp3 joined.mp3

and voila, you have one large mp3 file.

My question: is there a method of doing the opposite, i.e. splitting an mp3 file, this easily?

Source: (StackOverflow)

Auto-tagging MP3s

I have a ton of MP3s, but their ID tags are not filled in. Going in manually to populate them is simply too much work.

I was wondering if there is a way to populate them automatically. Perhaps by feeding the MP3s to Shazam or Midori or something like. I am not above writing some code to make it happen, if someone can suggest a way.

Source: (StackOverflow)

Can I losslessly increase the volume of an MP3 file?

I want to increase the volume of some MP3 files that I have. Is there a way to do this in a lossless way (without re-compressing the MP3 file and hence decreasing its quality)?

Source: (StackOverflow)