Hi, I'm trying to work out a way to preserve some more quality when I compress to a low bit rate m4a to be used in an online browser game.

Any help would be greatly appreciated for any software oriented musicians! 

Cheers

Thanks for you response, I've been trying out a few different options such as Max and my go-to DAW Logic X, but will definitely check out using switch and Triumph. I have to get iZotope's RX, it's been a long time coming. This particular project I'm working on is extremely limiting on audio file size, we're talking getting a 38mb 7min track down to below 1.6mb  Complete heresy in other words.

I've experimented with Limiting, compressing and EQ to try to make the potential file size smaller before encoding to m4a, would you have any tips on that side of things?

I think my next steps will be to get iZotope's RX, would you have any suggestions on what to experiment in RX to get the file size as small as possible without it sounding like it's underwater?

Cheers!

5 hours ago, jalport said:

Limiting, compressing and EQ to try to make the potential file size smaller

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would have guessed those things shouldn't have any serious effect on the resulting file size, as far as I'd imagine.  And if the goal is to preserve "quality" of your sound, those steps will absolutely have an audible effect on the end result, as opposed to finding another way to package the audio.

"Audio compression" and "file compression" are essentially unrelated. Limiting / compression changes the dynamic range of your music (i.e. the spread from the quietest sounds to the lowest sounds) but has no impact on file size afaik.

If you have bad file quality, though, it might be a result of bouncing tracks that haven't been properly metered. Try just dropping your master volume and then doing all your rendering / file conversions. 

I think your right, It definitely has minimal impact on it if any- but it would be interesting to find out if there's anyone out there who has some clever techniques up their wizard sleeves. Unfortunately the sort of compression rate I've had to use is 60 kbps for an mp4, to reach the sort of file size needed, and crushing my dreams in the process

Thanks Will, it was on a bit of whim- I understand they're both very different things but I thought there could be a chance, there wasn't.

Will make sure the metering is right too, thanks for the suggestion!

That's a good point to mention on preparing the track in a compositional and mixing sense. I think I'll have to incorporate that into the process. I suppose the advantage of making those changes, is that you can lower the bit rate further whilst avoiding being overwhelmed by chunky bits, and therefore getting the file size smaller as a result. Thanks for the heads up on it not directly affecting file size though!

RX does sound decent but I'm feeling intimidated by the huge cost of the advanced version. Do you think the standard version would have enough plugins to help tackle this issue?

Thanks for your help!