Burn Hell! .m4a to mp3???

[gosilver]

 

 

Need some assistance here....

 

In our restaurants we run background music from our server which plays thru a network CD/mp3 player. We rip our cds, then create custom day-part playlists and dump them on the server - which then randomly selects tracks.

 

Last year I ripped a mountain of music using iTunes which saved the files as .m4a Problem now is that newly installed player in restaurant only plays mp3 format. Trawling the web I read that converting from .m4a to mp3 causes a loss in quality.

 

Is this fact? Any way of knowing what percentage loss in quality?

 

I am happy to go back to rip everything again if I needed. Can anyone suggest a program that will also fix the problem of equalization/volume output across all my music (some tracks player louder or quieter than others). I use Macs mostly - in case this is an issue.

 

I'm willing to spend $ on the right solution if needed.

 

Many thanks for any advice

 

Paul

[Gregori]

You DO know that 'public performance' requires special licensing and royalties be paid, right?

At least, that's what the record company lawyers say...

 

The loss of conversion to MP3 is because of MP3. An audiophile wearing VERY expensive studio quality headsets MIGHT be able to hear the difference on a good day. Playing it through typical quality speakers in a restaurant setting is not going to be a problem. Really.

[gosilver]

Public performance fees paid and up to date. (Don't get me going on that one!)

 

Higher end audio system installed as we morph into club/live music venue late nights. So want to ensure that we employ a quality standard...

[SeanC]

I've done this several times and can't tell the difference. Most of the problems I detect (both for MP3 and AAC) are volume issues, i.e., tracks from different CDs are too loud or too soft at the same player volume level. I correct these differences with MP3 Gain, a free tool that performs a statistical analysis of your music library and losslessly adjusts or "levels" as needed.

[stubble!]

The quality loss going from a lossless format like M4A to MP3 is dependent on the level of compression used. A high bitrate (320kbps or even 192) will leave you with files that very few people could ever tell the difference on.

 

Personally I rip everything lossless (FLAC in my case), for the purposes of archival and playing on my home system. I don't hesitate to convert to MP3 files for use in other players and devices. I use 192k in my car player, and 128k files on my little flash player at the gym.

 

ITunes can convert to MP3 (Quoted from another forum):

In your iTunes preferences, go to "advanced". Choose "Importing" and then select "Import using MP3 encoder". Choose a bitrate. Then go back to your iTunes Library and select the files you want converted from m4a to mp3. Go to the "Advanced" menu bar option and select "convert to MP3". When they are done converting, select the new files in your iTunes library and drag them to a new folder on your desktop. Presto-chango! MP3s with tags!

[velomoto]

+1 on the suggestions from others...

 

If you've ripped your songs at a high bit rate (192+) then I wouldn't be concerned with the quality for background music. In fact these should be fine should you upgrade to higher quality gear - which is still far far lower quality than what audiophiles use (need) to discern the differences in various bit rates and compression schemes.

 

The volume level can vary SIGNIFICANTLY from track to track so this may be something you'll want to check.