Pyro, Sonar encoder or Nero?

vladasyn

...to decide between ordering Cakewalk Pyro or activate Sonar MP3 encoder. Both of those are $20...

If you need something versatile that can convert between just about any of the existing audio formats, I recommend Ease Audio Converter (cost $25).

http://download.cnet.com/...0-2140_4-10390634.html

On the other hand, if you just want to be able to quickly convert a WAV to an MP3, then Audacity is a good option, and it's free. 

http://download.cnet.com/...0-2170_4-10058117.html

Vladasyn - I have Nero. I do use it for converting Wave files to mp3. It works. It has things it can do, and a variety of features. I'm satisfied with the quality of the edited or converted files.

That said, I'd welcome the chance personally to use another tool. I'm sure there are better, more elegant tools available.  Probably some low cost options are available as well.

Nero Wave Editor has many useful and interesting functions: among others, you have the possibility to transpose (with no artefacts till 5 semi-tones up and down) and a "karaoke" function with central track/voice canceller... Very useful for certain musical tasks !

do a search on how to put the lame encoder into sonar for free

I have had issues with older versions of pyro. If it were me I would look for other options. This may be out of your price range but I purchased Sony Vegas platinum. This is a very good video editing program. Platinum also came with a program called Sound Forge. This is by far the best thing I have used to convert any sound file.

I only export using the microsoft wav inside Sonar. I use Sound Forge to convert it to anything else I need. This has resolved a lot of issues for me. I had the old mp3 converter that came in pro audio 9. It would not work in the 64 bit version of Sonar. 

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/soundforgesoftware?keycode=64588

I found a new version of Sound Forge on line for 48 bucks. This version should be more then enough for what you need to do. All the cakewalk plugins work with in it as well. The plugins that come with sound forge are excellent and they work inside Sonar. Sound forge does a whole list of things besides converting audio files.

CD burning is built into sound Forge and the audio editing tools are great. It does audio restoration and mastering as well. I use it with Izotope ozone and it works really well. It has vst support.

Another +1 on Lame

I use it with Goldwave, an excellent freeware converter

That's odd, I've never paid for it and I always download it from their own site.

Is this something new?

I'm just curious, you guys that use a product like Goldwave, what do you use it for exactly?  I do all I need to do in Sonar and at the very end export  to either MP3 and/or WAV.  What work/tweaks are you doing in a specialist audio editor?

Yes,  Sony !

But, we can wonder concerning all the trade names suggested in this thread :

Is there really a difference concerning the quality resampling for converting any files to Red Book or another format between Sony, Nero, Sonar X2 itself, others ... ?

For instance, even if I always used Nero and I'm happy with it, and although some people who have technical knowledge told me, in diverse forum, it wasn't possible  : I can often hear a difference  between the sound I record directly from Sonar to my old cd burner Philips cdr775; the cd I get from the Philips, for commodity reason, I duplicate it with Nero (just burning process in the same format, without edition or conversion) and the new cd coming from Nero has lost some depht in the sound ;maybe it's more audible with certain mixes than others, but I could notice it !

Don't know Mike.

I've always got better Mp3 results when working from a 16 bit dithered file

I think that sometimes doing sample rate conversion/bit reduction/dithering AND converting to Mp3 in one go is a bit too much for some of the algorithms out there.

Interesting! Thanks guys!

I think cakewalks internal encoder function sucks! Maybe it is not the encoder maybe it is the process of mixing and converting at the same time. I was having problems all the way back when I first joined this forum. No solution was found for the low quality of my mp3 compared to other mp3s 

I first thought it was my limited mixing abilities and using Sonar 7. Then I discovered that exporting to wav and then burning to CD provided a better sounding export. I could then rip that CD and have an mp3 that sounded just as good as other mp3s. 

So now I ruled out a lack of knowledge or doing something wrong and looked to the export function of audio itself within Sonar. I don't know how it works with everyone else, but on my system If I export from Sonar with any other format then Wav it does not sound as good. If I apply dither in the export and change the format it sounds even worse. It is chunkified and broken up.


My audio always sounds the best when exported using the Wav microsoft export. I don't know why that is. I have run extensive tests using different sample rates, bit depths, and dither algorithms. In my personal experience exporting with another format outside of wav does not work well inside of Sonar. For the life of me I don't know why that is. I have tried everything to resolve it. I have run very extensive tests


My solution was to export in wave and find another program to convert the file to any format I need. I first purchased pyro for this. It was a much older version then the one they have now. At the time it did not work well. When I started using Sound forge I was amazed at how well it did format conversions. So now this is no longer an issue. I thought that if Sound forge could convert better maybe it could master better. All the plugins that are found in cakewalk work withing sound forge except the pro channel modules. Sound forge works great for mastering as well.


my go to platform for mastering now is either sound forge and Ozone 5 or Sonar X2 and Ozone 5. It all depends on what audio formats I will need. 

I use audacity, it's free, it works, and has lots of useful tools. :)