The Batch Audio To Mp3 Concatenator Lite/Pro 1.23

Software to easily concatenate the audio found on files with any of the types AAC, AIFF, AU, FLAC, M4A, MP3, OGG, OGA, OPUS, RA, RM, WAVE, WMA, or WV with the best quality and the smallest file size, taking into account both the maximum required quality and the compatibility with the target (hardware/software) player.

When the audio on the found files needs to be encoded into the mp3 format, the program, to achieve the best quality, uses the latest version of LAME, version 3.100, which has been customly compiled to adapt to the in-use cpu, so that it can be used with cpus as old as the Pentium and Windows versions as old as Windows XP.

The program is profile based, to make it easier to use. Specifically, there are two main profiles, the Audiophile (bitrate 320kbps) and the on-the-go (bitrate 192kbps) ones, which are further subdivided in stereo or mono.

The encoding method for mp3 files can be chosen (abr, cbr, or vbr), so that one can choose whether to use the better encoding method in terms of both quality and file size (variable-bit-rate = vbr) or the most compatible one (constant-bit-rate = cbr).

As encoding audio into the mp3 format is a lossy operation (loses quality), whenever possible the original audio is not re-encoded, being the stream corresponding to it (assuming it is already in the mp3 format) just copied to the target file as is or with its frames re-formatted as required to be in accordance with the target format.

When the original audio is not (re-)encoded, the process is lossless (no loss of quality) and, as so, does not use LAME but code specifically created for the purpose by the author of this program.

The information regarding whether or not the audio on the original file has been (re-)encoded is shown on the information displayed by the program on its grid view.

Concatenating (the audio streams corresponding to) mp3 files is much more difficult than what might appear when you undertake a google search. Specifically, when you do such a search, you will be given plenty of results claiming that joining the audio on mp3 files can be undertaken simply by concatenating/joinning the contents of the source mp3 files into the target one. This is not correct and if you do this you will be asking for trouble, being some of the reasons for the problems that may arise the following:

1) mp3 files may have more information into them than the one corresponding to the mp3 stream (for instance, they may have tags) and a player is supposed to ignore all the information that comes after the mp3 stream. Thus, if you concatenate an mp3 file to one that has a tag at the end, then only the mp3 stream corresponding to the first file will be found and played;

2) the number of channels specified by different mp3 files may not be equal, ones may be encoded in stereo and the other ones may be encoded in mono, thus the decoding process of the concatenated file may originate buffer problems if the decoder does not re-configure the process for each frame of the mp3 stream (which normally is the case, as it is much more efficient to consider that the whole stream is encoded in the same way), giving rise to parts of the music that do not sound like that;

3) the sampling frequency specified by different mp3 files may not be equal, thus the decoding process of the concatenated file may originate buffer problems if the decoder does not re-configure the process for each frame of the mp3 stream (which normally is the case, as it is much more efficient to consider that the whole stream is encoded in the same way), giving rise to parts of the music that do not sound like that;

4) one mp3 file may use a free-format bitrate and at least one other may use a normal-format bitrate (or may use a free-format bitrate that is not equal to the other one), thus the decoding process of the concatenated file may originate buffer problems if the decoder does not re-configure the process for each frame of the mp3 stream (which normally is the case, as it is much more efficient to consider that the whole stream is encoded in the same way), giving rise to parts of the music that do not sound like that; and

5) sometimes, not all the data (specificaly, the ancillary-data) corresponding to the last mp3 frame is included on the file, in order to save space. Thus, it must be reconstructed before joining mp3 streams or the following mp3 stream will not be found;

In order to avoid all the corner cases that may arise when trying to simply concatenate mp3 files, programs that do not understant the mp3 format will simply ask a mp3 encoder (like ffmpeg or lame) to re-encode the original audio stream into a new one, which is a lossy process, as explained before.

The The Batch Audio To Mp3 Concatenator (as explained before) does not do this; it reads the mp3 stream on each file and tries to re-format it as needed (lossless process) and only when this is not possible it asks LAME to re-encode the audio corresponding to it (lossy process).

The standard (a.k.a. Lite) version of the program opens audio containers of type MP3 and WAVE; the professional (a.k.a. Pro) version of the program opens audio containers of type AAC, AIFF, AU, FLAC, M4A, MP3, OGG, OGA, OPUS, RA, RM, WAVE, WMA, and WV.

The program is batch-based, meaning that as soon as the settings are chosen they can be applied to as many files as you wish - you just have to let it process all of them.

Last but not least, the program does not require any installation - it is a portable one. Thus, it can be run from a pen drive.

Software compatibility:

Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10

Hardware compatibility:

Pentium or more recent cpu

Type of installation:

No installation required - portable software