How to Increase Your MP3 Player Capacity

Today, flash memory based MP3 players are available for a decent bargain, but this stands true only for the small 512MB or 1GB models. In this guide, we’ll offer you a solution to your size problems by squeezing more music into your tiny MP3 player than ever before.

The concept is simple. But first, a little background info.

Downloaded MP3 files come in a variety of bitrates such as 128, 160, 192, etc. The 128 kilobit MP3s are generally referred to as near-CD quality and file sizes are usually 1 minute per MB, while the 192 kilobit MP3s are as good as CD-quality, but file sizes are around 40% more, so a 3-minute song would be over 4MB. All this just sounds like a couple of MBs when you speak in singular terms, but if you put in a mix of 128, 160 and 192 kilobit MP3s in your MP3 player, you could be wasting at least 20 to 30% of storage space on average. Take a look at the graph below to get a visual clue.

 For most casual users of MP3 players, near-CD quality variable bitrate (VBR) MP3s averaging around 115 kilobits will sound as good as higher quality 192 kilobit MP3s, so we shall re-encode some of the higher bitrate MP3s to VBR ~115, and gain some extra space. For this, we will use the best open source MP3 encoder, LAME, and an easy to use front-end for it, called winLAME. winLAME is open source and the installer comes with LAME already in it, so you don’t need to download two things. You can download winLAME here. Install it and have it ready for use.

There’s something you need to remember—MP3 is a lossy compression format, so when any file is encoded, a bit of quality is lost. MP3 itself works on the perceptual quality principle, discarding elements of a full .WAV or .AIFF sound file that the normal human ear will not pick up any way, to reduce the file size. Encoding an MP3 again to another MP3 will also induce more quality loss, but if the source MP3 file is a direct CD rip, the re-encoded MP3 will not sound too bad. As always, keep the original, compare the re-encoded file, and THEN decide if you want to delete the original file.

Also note that this guide is intended to be used with MP3 players that support standard USB drag-and-drop. This instantly removes the iPod, Creative Zen etc. from the list of target players, however, the same technique can be used BEFORE the MP3s are imported into iTunes or any other such software.

Let’s go save the world...er...storage space!

Step 1

First, you need to identify the files that are over 128 kilobits. You shouldn’t re-encode files that are already in 128 kilobits, as the quality would deteriorate considerably.

Connect your MP3 player In Windows Explorer and open the drive up. Change your view mode to 'Details' and then right click the columns to enable 'Bitrate' display. The bitrates for all the files will be displayed next to the files. Click on the 'Bitrate' column twice to sort it, so you’ll have the fat files up first.