Improving on Audio Book Sound Quality

FreeRip is a free software that can be used to rip (extract) music from audio CDs. It however goes beyond that. FreeRip can also encode music compress or expand) thereby converting it from one file format to another. The sound of the output audio will depend on the format and/or the encoding parameters.

Most audiobooks found on the Internet are in mp3 format. In most websites, the free one are being over compressed, not only to reduce file sizes but also to reduce quality so that people who need it will be forced to buy the high quality files. The quality of these files can however be regained. Just follow this example step by step.

Go to www.mgshareware.com and download FreeRip. Don't panic. It is free and legal to download and use.

Install the program file on your computer and launch it.

When launched, the interface appears as shown below.

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Click tools and click convert single audio file or convert multiple audio files (depending on your needs). Let’s assume you have more than one mp3 file to convert.

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Click on the add button to select the mp3 files whose quality you want to improve.

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A dialogue box will be displayed, asking you the files you want to select. Select them by clicking on one and using the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl + A". Click "open" to add the files to FreeRip's file list.

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The files have been selected and added to the list. Examine the screen below carefully. What do you see. There is a field called output format with various parameters. These are the parameters that control the quality of the mp3 files.

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Set the parameters as shown below:

Encoding = 1-MP3
Stereo = 2-stereo
Mode = 0-Constant (CBR)
Min bitrate = 128

The Mininum birate is the primary factor that controls the sound quality. 128 is recommended for mp3 sound files because it brings about some sort of balance between quality and file size. The higher the bitrate, the larger the file size. It however, you have a lot of free disk space on your PC you can even choose 320 for your bitrate.

Choose the output path (where you will like the converted files to be stored) and click ok to convert. That's all. After a few minutes you are done and in possession of high sound quality. I hope this helps you.

If you don't understand anything, please feel free to post your problem post a comment and I will e-mail you an answer.

Yours Truly,
Ferdinand Che.