I’m ditching streaming services and just going with local music. However all my CDs are converted to either flac or 320kbps mp3 files on my PC and thus far too large for the limited storage I have on my phone.
I was hoping there might be an app that would automatically downconvert to something like 128kbps and then copy over to the Music directory on my phone. A bit like how Calibre can automatically convert eBook files (e.g. mobi to epub) and then send them to your ereader?
“Downsizing” an mp3 is what we call transcoding, and it’s bad. An mp3 (or the better ogg vorbis) works (basically) by discarding parts of the audio that you won’t hear. Doing that will discard parts of the mp3 that already has a bunch of parts discarded and this makes it sound bad.
I do something like what you’re looking for, but it’s all through a bunch of custom scripts and crap that I made. I buy flac, encode that to ogg (which sounds better than mp3s at lower bitrates), those oggs get synced to my phone, then later I organize those oggs to my collection.
I think you’ll have to either accept these large mp3s or start a lossless collection.
I would sooner suggest that you find a decent hosting service of free storage or just shove a decent sized microSD into your phone. Lossless music is the way to go. I started doing the mp3 thing quite a long time before most of the world even knew what they were, having been on the pirating scene early in the 90s. So back then I got most of my music in highly compressed mp3. But in the recent years I’ve been slowly replacing all of it with lossless format and it sounds SO MUCH better.
So while I hope you get your answer, should you choose to go that route as you’ve tentatively planned, I’d just suggest you pause a moment and rethink whether it’s the route to go. MicroSD chips are very cheap, and if you have an iPhone so it’s not an option, you could get a cheapie Android phone with a slot and use that for music. You can get a nice small device several years old online for like $15. I even have quite a few I could provide you with one if you wanted.
It’s not really an “App” but tools like
ffmpegorsoxorlamecan do that no problem. It might take a while to convert your entire collection though … but depending on the size might just take a night or, few nights.If you have a ridiculously large collection and do want it “on demand” you could also use e.g.
inotifyto monitor directories, e.g.~/Music/ForPhone/so that any file added to that directory gets converted.FWIW I’d use a phone with a microSD card as those days one can get a 1To for less than 100€ so probably no conversion needed even for a large collection.
Edit: based on a recent conversation I’d try transcoding capabilities of LMS https://github.com/epoupon/lms cf https://lms-demo.poupon.dev/settings from their demo instance
Well, it’s not great to take an already compressed audiostream like 320kbps mp3, and then compress it again. Use your FLACs if possible. Then, I’d recommend that you use .ogg - they give better compression (smaller files), but with better sound than mp3…
There’s a lot of apps out there, but AFAIK not anyone who does this automatically for you.
Have you considered self-hosting Plexamp? It supports lossless quality and lets you both steam and download your music at any bitrate you want (even 128 if you really have to, but fuck me that hurts to type.
That’s what I do, and before long trips with spotty service I’ll download a dozen albums or so in flac so I’ve got a decent lossless selection for flights/etc
DbPowerAmp has a bulk converter tool. It’s proprietary payware but cracked versions are available.
For lower bitrates, I’d suggest using a different codec than MP3. Opus is really solid, and at 128 kbps it will probably get you quality similar to MP3 at 192 kbps. Or you could go lower, and 96 kbps with Opus will be similar to MP3 at 128 kbps. I don’t know an app that will do it automatically, but the CLI tools are really simple to use: you point them at the FLAC and tell it the target bitrate and that’s it.
Alternatively, if you have access to a macOS machine, their AAC encoder is really good and likely superior to any MP3 encoder at equivalent bitrates.
This, @Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works.
I’m an audio engineer and can confirm that if you want the best quality audio for the file size, you want Opus. Opus at 128kbps is considered transparent, so it’s roughly as good as 320kbps MP3s, but y’know, less than half the size.
Hey! Good to know about the 128 kbps threshold.
What’s your take on MP3 bitrates? I’ve read some posts online claiming that 320 kbps is overkill most of, if not all of, the time. They claimed that there is little to no gain going above around 220 kbps. In your experience, is there any truth to this?
Generally this is true, but it depends on the encoder used. Back during the huge boom of MP3 popularity in the late 90s and early 00s, it likely did make a difference, so if you’re looking at MP3s that were encoded back then I would go for 320kbps every time just to be safe, but modern encoders generally do much better like you said.
These days if I were encoding an MP3 I’d use LAME at -V0 setting, letting it lower the bitrate where it can without sacrificing quality. That said, per this test from 2014 that I found as a source on Wikipedia, a 96kbps VBR Opus file is at least as good if not better than an MP3 with -V 5 as the setting on LAME with approximately a 135kbps bitrate.
Thanks a lot!
Handbreak could be used for that and automatically run for set direcotiees if i remember correctly.
*handbrake
Thank you! I’ll take a look :)
Just use a ~500GB SD card, but it costs around 40€.
My phone does not have expandable memory and storage is expensive in my country anyway.
Navidrome does that. You have to setup a PC, or a raspberry Pi with navidrome, and then use a client like Symfonium (costs $5, not open source, but it’s the best subsonic client out there), and tell it to automatically downconvert music when played via the phone. I have a Raspberry Pi 3B+, with just 1 GB of RAM, running navidrome. DietPi + navidrome (which is installable directly via dietpi’s software selection), together they take just 80-120 MB of RAM!
I had Jellyfin before that, and Emby, and they were dogs. 1 GB of RAM was not enough for them, they’d swap with an additional 200-300 MB of RAM. And they were slow with large music libraries too. Navidrome/Subsonic don’t have such issues. Big music libraries are handled fast with their db/engine.
If you prefer to not use a server, there are encoding shell scripts that do batch-encoding: https://github.com/caleis/flac2mp3/blob/master/flac2mp3.sh
128kbps mp3s are terrible
You are correct and I don’t normally like to listen to anything less than 320kbps. BUT, my phone does not have expandable memory so it’s hard limited. And where I listen to most of my music while travelling is in the car using the car’s speakers which aren’t going to make much difference listening to 128vs 320. Even when streaming music, I’m not going to get 320. I may go up to 192kbps instead of 128 but I doubt it will make much audible difference with shitty car speakers.
If your device supports it, you might want to encode to Opus instead. Opus produces much higher quality files at much smaller file sizes than MP3.
For example, Opus at 128kbps is considered transparent when compared to the source file. You can probably go down to 64-96kbps when its just for playback in your car.
https://wiki.xiph.org/Opus_Recommended_Settings
As for transcoding them, you might want to check out ffmpegfs: https://github.com/nschlia/ffmpegfs
It can create a “virtual” drive based on your source files and automatically transcodes them when you drag & drop files from there onto your device.
192 is okayish imo
You can use Plex to stream music from your own server. The mobile app is called Plexamp, and it’s pretty great.
I don’t want to stream at all because I don’t want to be reliant on having an internet connection :)
This is what I use
Might not be the most convenient option depending on your personal use-case, but have you considered a dedicated audio device? I personally got a refurbished LG V30 because I came across a YT vid while looking for cheap options for having a dedicated “mp3” player to keep archived/favorite episode of podcasts, audiobooks, and music. Seems there is a decent fanbase of folks that love the 3.5mm DAC that phone has (of course has Bluetooth too). It also has microSD slot. Got a 512GB card (can use up to 2TB which I might do at some point). Most of the music I have on it is flac where possible. I keep it offline and just transfer files via USB, but could use wifi to sync with PC if I wanted to at some point. Shit lasts a pretty long time with wifi/bluetooth off only using the headphone jack (helps that the battery was replaced by the refurb).
There are also lots of cheaper Android-based players (I got one before I came across the vid on the V30) but can have some amount of malware and no easy access to their firmware or communities that can advise custom ROMs to safely flash something clean and/or newer. When I got my no-name device I just side-loaded apks to avoid giving access to my Google account (though I plan to keep my V30 offline after I got the last updates for the OS and LG apps). I just wanted to have something that I only use for local audio and just keep it in my car or backpack and have access to the three apps I like (Musicolet for music, Podcast Addict for podcasts, and Smart AudioBook Player for my audiobooks).
Not automatic (I think) and a bit clunky but the Strawberry music player does have a transcode feature so you could select music files and transcode them a certain way output to another folder. It’s not something I ever do but I did a quick test to a USB drive and it seems to work okay. It’s an option if you opt to use a gui to click through.
PS - Strawberry does have a panel where it lists “Devices” and maybe your phone could show up there and the transcoding would work a bit more automatically, wasn’t able to test that here.
