From: dieterhansbritz@gmail.com   
      
   On Sat, 04 Jan 2020 15:27:41 -0800, Dave Platt wrote:   
      
   > In article ,   
   > Dieter Britz   wrote:   
   >>I use Audacity and want to concatenate mp3 files with it. There are   
   >>instructions for that - import the (e.g. two)   
   >>files, click on the second, CTRL C, go to the end of file 1 and CTRL V,   
   >>and export that. Even when I wipe the second before exporting the   
   >>concatenated top one, it turns out too big. E.g. file 1, 12 Mb, file 2,   
   >>4 Mb, but the result is 22 Mb.   
   >>   
   >>What am I doing wrong, or how should I do it?   
   >   
   > If you're using Audacity, then what's happening is that Audacity is   
   > decoding (decompressing) the MP3 file when it loads then, turning them   
   > back into normal audio samples.  After you concatenate them, the "save"   
   > operation is then re-encoding the combined file, at whatever compression   
   > or bit-rate setting that Audacity is set up to use.   
   >   
   > That's going to have two effects:   
   >   
   > -  You'll lose audio quality, compared to the original MP3 files,   
   >    because of the extra decode/re-encode step (decoding is lossless, but   
   >    the re-encoding step is lossy).   
   >   
   > -  The combined file size may be either more or less than the sum of   
   >    the two separate encoded file sizes, because Audacity's compression   
   >    settings are probably different than whatever did the MP3 encodings   
   >    of the original files.   
   >   
   > A better way to do this is to use a tool which is capable of parsing the   
   > MP3 data and catenating the two streams, without having to decode and   
   > re-encode the audio.  As far as I'm aware, Audacity cannot do this.   
   >   
   > If you have a Linux system, you could use "mp3wrap" (Debian and Ubuntu   
   > have it and it's probably available for other distributions as well). It   
   > can combine the streams, and still preserve MP3 tagging ("crossing the   
   > streams" isn't always bad :-) )   
   >   
   > If you're using Windows there are very probably similar utilities   
   > available.   
      
   Thanks! I just installed mp3wrap, didn't know it existed. Good stuff!   
      
   --   
   Dieter Britz   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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