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Making windows media audio files smaller? Please help me out

Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 8:31 pm
by lupe19
Does anyone know how to make an audio file smaller on goldwave?
I'm trying to cut a WMA (windows media audio file) and make it 300KB or smaller. I've tryed doing it but the smallest i've cut the file is 5MB.. I have songs on my phone and i try to set them as my ringtone BUT i can't because the "File is too big" I've made them smaller on goldwave before but i forgot how.

Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 9:14 pm
by DougDbug
Making windows media files smaller???
Are you asking about WMA (Windows Media Audio) formatted files, or audio files in general? If the following doesn't answer your question, or if you'd like some advice, please tell us a little more about what you're doing.

File size can be calculated from the bitrate. With lossy compression formats, you can choose the bitrate, and if you know the bitrate, you can estimate file size (for any format) with the following formula:
File Size in MB = (Bitrate in kbps x Playing Time in minutes) / 140

With WMA files, saving with Save As and choosing a lower bitrate will give you a smaller file (and lower quality).

GoldWave can open a file and then save it in a different format, but if you're not editing the audio, you don't really need an audio editor and you can use a more straightforward audio conversion program.

There are three categories of audio format:
1. Uncompressed (i.e. WAV). The size/bitrate is determined by the sample rate (kHz), bit depth (i.e. 16 bits), and number of channels (i.e. 2 for stereo).

2. Lossless compression (i.e. FLAC and lossless WMA). The file can be compressed to about 60% of the uncompressed file size. Of course, with lossless compression there are no quality issues. The audio quality is identical to the uncompressed file.

3. Lossy compression (i.e. MP3, WMA). Data is thrown-away, and you can compress to 1/5th or less of the uncompressed file size. Of course, here there is a trade-off between file size and quality. Even though data is being thrown away, a high-bitrate MP3 will generally sound identical to the original and will be indistinguishable in a blind "ABX test".

Re: Making windows media audio files smaller? Please help me

Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 2:12 pm
by GoldWave Inc.
Try using File | Save As to save the file under a different name with "WMA Voice 9, 16 kbps, 16 kHz, mono" attributes. That file should be much smaller, but the quality will be much lower. You can select attributes with a lower "kbps" number to make it even smaller.

Chris

Re: Making windows media audio files smaller? Please help me

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 8:48 pm
by cdeamaze
lupe19 wrote:Does anyone know how to make an audio file smaller on goldwave?
I'm trying to cut a WMA (windows media audio file) and make it 300KB or smaller. I've tryed doing it but the smallest i've cut the file is 5MB.. I have songs on my phone and i try to set them as my ringtone BUT i can't because the "File is too big" I've made them smaller on goldwave before but i forgot how.
In Why are my files so big?It is observed that
If you create a music file in midi format, your 11 meg wave file will become 11k instead. No compression is required.
So in this case a 5M wave file will become 5k. Even if WMA file is 10 times bigger, the result is still only 50K well within the required 300K. For reduction of file size without using midi, see also How to cut your file size