VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

ConnieTerwilliger

I received some auditions for a project and have a question for the hive and a comment.

First, unless asked specifically to send a .wav file, please just send an mp3. Email servers get full fast when you are doing a casting. Certainly save a copy as a .wav if you want to - and some projects specifically say that they might cast off the demo. Then it makes sense to have the original as a .wav.

Now to the question about mp3 files. One of the auditions came in a 320 instead of 128.

File Type: 44100Hz, 16-bit, Mono
Uncompressed Size: 4.11 MB (4,313,088 bytes)
File Format: mp3PRO® (FhG) MPEG Layer-3, 320 Kbps (Mono)

Is there consensus that 320 is not necessary for an audition? Again, it makes the file bigger - and probably not needed for an audition.

If I am mistaken, please edumacate me please.
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Philip Banks · Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 12:10 pm Post subject:

Your specs are on the money as anyone who has ever done an audition over the telephone will tell you. Hi-tech is for the job.

Eddie Eagle · M&M Joined: 23 Apr 2008 Posts: 2393

128 auditions. Check!

Bish · Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 1:15 pm Post subject:

Storage space is cheap (and I always save the wav/aiff anyway)... 256kbps is what I send unless requested otherwise (oh, and I'm always in 24-bit as well). I just don't think about it... I just drag and drop my aiff onto the converter and it spits out the mp3. I'm not sure the bitrate of the mp3 would dictate "broadcast quality" or not... it's more a case of an engineer having more wiggle room and flexibility when working with a wav/aiff. I've know 128k mp3 files being used for broadcast. Some people care... some people don't Smile

... anyway, if someone's that light on storage that they have to mitigate by asking for smaller auditions, then they should splash out the extra $50 and buy another terabyte!
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Lee Gordon · Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 1:24 pm Post subject:

I generally do mp3s at 192 but, yeah, 128 is probably good enough. That's the acceptable finished product for many radio & TV stations.
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Mike Harrison · Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 3:21 pm Post subject:

Agreed. 128k for auditions.

I don't know how broadcast spot distribution is handled these days but, in the late 90s and into the 00s, services like DGS, Spot Taxi/Fast Channel, etc sent radio stations 320k mp3s. They sounded excellent but were smaller (about 20%) than wavs.
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ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2016 4:12 pm Post subject:

Bish the over achiever.

And about that storage. Have never even thought about a limit before. I was using an email address for this project that I don't normally use and didn't realize that it was set at a fairly small cap and was getting full so fast. I have since changed some settings to give it some more space. And I have a paid dropbox account if I need it. Plus space on my server to upload files for clients.

I was just surprised by the one file that was twice as big as the others.
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