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In article writes:

We don't do mp3 for a living.
Well as a webmaster, I do!

Actually, no, I had not mentioned it previously because I don't
understand why anyone would care to know.

Actually we don't care whether you're a webmaster or not. Anyone can
be these days. But what's important is that you care about making
audio files for streaming, and that can be more complex than making
them for downloading and off-line listening. Unless you're THAT kind
of webmaster. g

I read an article a few years back about optimizing audio
for streaming distribution and it was quite involved.

Source???

Too long ago to find, but according to Bob O., it's been made
obsolete. Today encoders are better (and less fussy about what goes in
- something I didn't know) and whatever programs a two-year-old
article wrote about probably don't exist today, at least not in the
same form they did then. But honest, I DID read it, in a legitimate
publication. It might have even been an article of Ty's. (ring any
bells?)

I can do that with sox. Kewl. Of course, everything sounds like a
telephone then but oh well.

Well, you don't have to be that brutal, but if you leave off
everything below 100 Hz (which means you might have to do something to
make people realize that there's a kick drum playing) and above about
7.5 kHz, most on-line listeners will never miss it.

I blame the generally lo-fi state of "computer speakers" these days for
basically throwing the public's world of audio backwards by about 35-40
years to when AM transistor radios ruled the roost.

I agree. Used to be that a man was proud of his "hi-fi" system that
took up half the living room. Today there is far more music played
over computer speakers, computers or portable players with mediocre
headphones attached, or boom boxes. Even a car radio is good by
comparison.

Furthermore, it is also my experience-based belief that, "normalizing"
mono AM radio WAVs (to RMS -12dBFS) which have been transferred from
MiniDisc masters *definitely* improves the perceived quality of the
resultant MP3s. But is that just because louder is better in general?
Or because louder is better with lossy? Or both? (I believe both.)

Possibly both, but I suspect that it's mostly that louder sounds
better. I think it's been beaten to death in this thread, but I'll
reiterate that normalizing only increases level of the whole file.
It's no different from turning up the playback volume except that the
listener doesn't have to touch the volume control. Peak limiting and
compression can bring the average level closer to the peak level, and
this actually sounds louder at a given playback level (pre-data
compression) and would no doubt data-compress differently than the
same audio without the "loudness enhancing" processing.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

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