User manual NERO MP3PRO PLUG-IN

[. . . ] MP3/mp3PRO plug-in How you can make an audio CD from mp3 or mp3PRO files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The mp3PRO encoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 How you can make your own mp3PRO files with Nero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 How you can make your own MP3 files with Nero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 How you can make an audio CD from mp3 or mp3PRO files Launch 'Nero' and the dialog for creating a new disk will appear. Select as disc type 'CD' and highlight the 'Audio CD' icon on the left and the appropriate tab ('index card') will open. Activate the 'Write CD TEXT on CD' check box if your recorder supports this function. Click on the 'New' button. Now you only need to use 'drag and drop' to pull the MP3/mp3PRO files from the file browser into the compilation window together with your chosen audio CD selection. [. . . ] When encoding, psychoacoustic models are used to remove "inaudible" acoustic elements from the audio file. Most test listeners can hardly (or not at all) distinguish between the sound from mp3PRO files that have been stored with a sufficiently high bitrate from the original files. These are first, the quality of the psychoacoustic model used for data reduction and second, the bitrate of the mp3PRO file. Encoding quality: The quality of the psychoacoustic model with Nero is excellent. Naturally, a compromise needs to be found between the complexity of the model and the computing time needed. Depending on the intended application of the mp3PRO file, the quality of the encoding (i. e. of the acoustic model) can be set at 'fast', 'medium' and 'highest'. At the 'fast' setting (and with the same hardware), encoding can take place at up to eight times the normal speed. The sound quality is already very good with the 'fast' setting and completely satisfactory for most applications. Bitrate: 'Bitrate' means the number of bits stored per second in the mp3 file. The higher this is, the smaller the amount of information that has to be removed from the original sound file. The mp3PRO file format lets you encode at either a constant or a variable bitrate (VBR). Constant bitrate: A bitrate of 64 KB per second has proved itself to be a fairly good compromise between sound quality and file size. At this bitrate, audio files, very roughly speaking, are compressed by somewhat more than a factor of 20. These recognize defective sections of the file (which may have arisen from incorrect data transfer from the Internet, etc. ). However, many decoders ignore this checksum information, while others reproduce a defective mp3PRO section as silence, in order to avoid sound interference in a defective part of the file. The mp3PRO file will be very slightly larger if this option is chosen. Allow intensity stereo coding: Setting this option permits the use of a special type of that only saves directional information and volume for high frequencies. This option should normally be activated. Allow Downmix: This option makes it possible to 'downmix' the input signal from stereo to mono. This has advantages when encoding a stereo source with a very low data rate - and where encoding in mono only would make sense. Padding: Because mp3PRO blocks within an mp3PRO file can be of different sizes and because some mp3PRO player programs cannot cope with MP3PRO different sized blocks, this option can be selected to specify how to deal with mp3PRO blocks of different size. The default setting with Nero is 'ISO', in other words, the procedure spelled out in the ISO-MP3PRO standard. 'Always' and 'never', as the names suggest, "top up" the differently sized mp3PRO blocks (in every case or not at all). [. . . ] In a similar way to the encoding of files on the hard disk, you can specify which parameters should be applied when encoding. Click on the 'Enable mp3PRO' button again if mp3PRO is activated and if you want to encode files in the MP3 format. Encoding audio files as MP3 files is always bound up with losses. When encoding, psychoacoustic models are used to remove "inaudible" acoustic elements from the audio file. Most test listeners can hardly (or not at all) distinguish between the sound from MP3 files that have been stored with a sufficiently high bitrate from the original files. [. . . ]