Saving Audio | The Educational Technology Center

Saving Audio

Exporting (or Saving) your Audio Files (generally as an MP3)

When exporting an MP3 it pretty much all comes down to the bit rate. The bit rate controls how much data (per second) is in the file and therefore get's played. This, therefore, translates into how many samples are in the file, which translates to file size and sound quality.

Bit rate Quality (links to 7 second samples) Average Size (per minute) Example File Size
192 Almost CD quality
Hear Sample		 ~1.5MB 176K
128 typical for many mp3s (near CD quality)
Hear Sample		 ~1MB 120K
112 typical for digital radio
Hear Sample		 < 1MB 104K
64 FM radio quality
Hear Sample		 ~ 500KB 60K
32 AM radio quality
Hear Sample		 ~ 250KB 32K
16 Short-wave radio
Hear Sample		 ~ 100KB 16K

Add Your Meta-Data

It's a word that many people are familiar with these days, and to some people being told to add it is almost like hearing your Mom say "east your vegetables!" But, if you don't already know, it's data about the data (or file), and, just like vegetables, it's really important. With audio files, like mp3s, you can encode ID3 tags to help an application that plays audio understand your file better. It also will provide the user with pertinent information - such as the title of the file while it's playing on their mp3 player or in there player on the computer. There are many tags, but a good set to use are these:

  • Song Title: set to your podcasts episode title
  • Artist: set to your name, the author of the podcast, or the copyright holder.
  • Year: the year you created this podcast episode
  • Track number: the episode number (first, second, third...)
  • Album: Title of your podcast
  • Comments: Anything you'd like, but a link to your podcast's web site would be a great idea! Remember whatever you do add will add size to your file.
  • Genre: Podcast