Reduce mp3 file size for app and web use

Typical 2 minutes piece of music is roughly 2-4MB in common mp3 format. This is size for usual quality that is stereo audio 256 kbps and 44.1 kHz sample rate. Tough the file size is not that large, it will slow down loading HTML5 game or mobile app, especially on wireless networks.

Web HTML5 or mobile game applications do not need nearly as high quality and the size can be reduced to ~400-700kB without too much audible quality penalty. Difference can be noticed if you listen for it, but it’s unlikely that users do notice anything, as they have nothing to compare it against. This also depends lot of the music, sharp high frequency sounds tend to distort first.

MP3/WAV to reduced size MP3

Easy way to convert mp3s is lame. A flexible command line mp3 decoder and encoder.

Here we use 1:45 minutes 1.7MB music piece Lake Hylia from Zelda Reorchestrated. I don’t own any rights to this music and it’s used purely for demonstration purposes. I selected this piece because it’s melodic and instrumental like most game music is.

Key to reducing file size is lower sample and bitrate, and most importantly converting file to mono. Example below is how to do this with lame 3.99.5 on OS/X. I installed lame using Macports.

$ lame -hv -mm --resample 22.05 "Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.original.mp3" -B 32 "Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.small.mp3"
LAME 3.99.5 64bits (http://lame.sf.net)
Autoconverting from stereo to mono. Setting encoding to mono mode.
Resampling:  input 44.1 kHz  output 22.05 kHz
polyphase lowpass filter disabled
Encoding Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.mp3
      to Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.small.mp3
Encoding as 22.05 kHz single-ch MPEG-2 Layer III VBR(q=4)
    Frame          |  CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU |    ETA
  3996/3996  (100%)|    0:01/    0:01|    0:01/    0:01|   82.375x|    0:00
  8 [  36] **
 16 [  24] *
 24 [   4] *
 32 [3932] **************************************************************************************************************************************
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   kbps       mono %     long switch short %
   31.7      100.0        99.9   0.1   0.1
Writing LAME Tag...done
ReplayGain: +3.7dB

This converts the input mp3 (lame also accepts .wav files) to 22.05kHz 64kbs monoaural mp3. The output file size is 412kB, resulting to nearly 75% savings. You can reduce file further by using even lower bitrate, (experiment -B 24 or -B 16), but you may start hearing distortions.

$ du -hs Zelda\ Reorchestrated\ -\ Lake\ Hylia.*
1.6M	Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.original.mp3
404K	Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.small.mp3

Test play the files here and listen for any differences.

Original: Zelda Reorchestrated – Lake Hylia.original.mp3
Reduced: Zelda Reorchestrated – Lake Hylia.small.mp3

MP3/WAV to reduced OGG Vorbis

This is main for Firefox as it still supports only Ogg Vorbis. You can convert mp3/wav file to reduced mono ogg vorbis with ffmpeg tool.

This example uses ffmpeg 2.1, and like lame I installed is on OS/X using Macports.

$ ffmpeg -i "Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.original.mp3" -strict experimental -acodec libvorbis -ab 32k -ar 22050 -ac 1 "Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.small.ogg"
ffmpeg version 2.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Oct 30 2013 23:24:10 with Apple LLVM version 5.0 (clang-500.2.79) (based on LLVM 3.3svn)
  configuration: --prefix=/opt/local --enable-swscale --enable-avfilter --enable-avresample --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvorbis --enable-libopus --enable-libtheora --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libmodplug --enable-libvpx --enable-libspeex --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-gnutls --enable-libfreetype --disable-outdev=xv --mandir=/opt/local/share/man --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --cc=/usr/bin/clang --arch=x86_64 --enable-yasm --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-nonfree --enable-libfaac
  libavutil      52. 48.100 / 52. 48.100
  libavcodec     55. 39.100 / 55. 39.100
  libavformat    55. 19.104 / 55. 19.104
  libavdevice    55.  5.100 / 55.  5.100
  libavfilter     3. 90.100 /  3. 90.100
  libavresample   1.  1.  0 /  1.  1.  0
  libswscale      2.  5.101 /  2.  5.101
  libswresample   0. 17.104 /  0. 17.104
  libpostproc    52.  3.100 / 52.  3.100
Input #0, mp3, from 'Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.original.mp3':
  Metadata:
    title           : Lake Hylia
    artist          : Zelda Reorchestrated
    album           : Twilight Princess
    track           : 11
  Duration: 00:01:44.39, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 128 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16p, 128 kb/s
Output #0, ogg, to 'Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.small.ogg':
  Metadata:
    title           : Lake Hylia
    artist          : Zelda Reorchestrated
    album           : Twilight Princess
    track           : 11
    encoder         : Lavf55.19.104
    Stream #0:0: Audio: vorbis (libvorbis), 22050 Hz, mono, fltp, 32 kb/s
    Metadata:
      title           : Lake Hylia
      artist          : Zelda Reorchestrated
      album           : Twilight Princess
      TRACKNUMBER     : 11
      encoder         : Lavf55.19.104
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (mp3 -> libvorbis)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
size=     398kB time=00:01:44.38 bitrate=  31.2kbits/s
video:0kB audio:387kB subtitle:0 global headers:3kB muxing overhead 1.866299%

Resulting OGG file size and quality is comparable to reduced mp3.

$ du -hs Zelda\ Reorchestrated\ -\ Lake\ Hylia.*p3
400K	Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.small.ogg
1.6M	Zelda Reorchestrated - Lake Hylia.original.mp3

Compare here:

Original: Zelda Reorchestrated – Lake Hylia.original.mp3
Reduced: Zelda Reorchestrated – Lake Hylia.small.ogg