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I wanted to increase the volume of an .mp3 file.

This is what I did:

lame --scale 4 src.mp3 dest.mp3

src.mp3 was 12.5MB whereas dest.mp3 is 4MB.

The audio is much louder, but I'm worried if it lost quality.

Maythux
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learner
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2 Answers2

2

MP3 uses lossy compression. Just by recompressing it and doing nothing else, you lose data and introduce artefacts. That said, such a drop probably means it's changing bitrate or the sample rate so there's even less data being stored. Or maybe the old compression was rubbish.

Either way, I wouldn't recompress. Use something like ReplayGain. This is a variable set in the file's tags to say how much louder that track has to be to match its album. You can set it without recompression. The downside is it requires the player to use it.

See: Adding ReplayGain tags

Community
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Oli
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0

LAME is an audio compressor, used to create compressed audio files, so it's normally make the size smaller.

Running man lame gives:

NAME
       lame - create mp3 audio files

SYNOPSIS
       lame [options] <infile> <outfile>

DESCRIPTION
       LAME  is  a program which can be used to create compressed audio files.

You can still having the same quality by specifying the ferquency (-s option) to satisfy your need.

Take a look for lame options

Maythux
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