on re-encoding radio/grammaphone audios

[theold1]

Some of the mod provided radio and grammaphone audios are awesome to have for ambiance, but for those of us short on disk space they can chew up a lot of space.

I was able to recode them at a lower bit rate and saved myself 1.5 GBs of disk space. There might be a little loss in quality, but it's still acceptable to me (these aren't super high-fi in the first place given the radio tech of the day!). If anyone else wants to do the same thing here is the command I used. You can mount the drive from a Linux or BSD machine and do this:

for f in *.mp3; do lame --quiet -m m --abr 25 "$f" "New/$f"; done

Which will leave all your re-encoded files in "New". If you're satisfied with them, just delete the originals and move the new ones to the original location ("mv New/* .").

[Von Manteuffel]

Another way is to run the files through a program like Media Coder ( it's freeware ) It lets you transcode between audio formats and can deliver MP3s down to around 24kbs.

If you want to you can also treat tracks using Audacity ( again freeware ) and save as an ogg vorbis, or Mp3 down to as small as 18kbs. All the material on my website ( link below ) has been reduced to 18 kbs and normalised to 96.5 db. I agree with you, WWII submarines didn't have hi-fi. In fact a lot of the listening would have been on Short Wave.

[virtualpender]

Von Manteuffel - your files are great. Thanks for posting those.

[Von Manteuffel]

Glad you like them. It's been a while since I posted them and there are updates and new material in the pipeline - if I ever get the time.

It's a question of personal preference, but, personally, I've moved away from stations offering entire programmes. Love them as I do, I don't play the game in a way which allows me to listen to a full 30 minutes of Fibber McGee & Molly, or Jack Benny, or a full hour of Lux Theatre. The distances involved in SH4 demand the use of Time Compression and I have limited playing time, so I need to get to the action a.s.a.p. Once I'm there and an engagement is imminent , the radio is switched off - it disappears when you submerge anyway ( but picks up where it stopped when you surface again !!!!)

So, I prefer the shorter musical and entertainment items randomised in the radio station folder, with scripted items ( i.e. in the events.ini file ) limited to News broadcasts.

Works for me and there's masses of material which lends itself to such a "slice & dice" approach. It just takes time to edit each one out of the original programme into a short stand-alone piece.

I'm currently busy with stuff for SH3, but will be releasing some new SH4 material in a few weeks.

Best wishes,

Von M

[virtualpender]

Very much looking forward to it.

Thanks again.