Another Refugee

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Mon Jul 1 23:32:51 BST 2013, Mike Casswell wrote:

>My immediate requirement is to change the default .m4a to mp3 for radio 
>downloads.

Hello Mike, welcome to the group :-)

 Is there a compelling reason you need to transcode or is it just a force of 
habit from
using Radio Downloader all this time?
 I had never used RD myself - being steady with GiP from Feb 2011 - but I 
did read its
documentation in the past and I seem to remember that RD transcodes by 
default (step in
if I am wrong); browsing in its Changelog I found these entries:

0.24.2
BBC Radio Provider
enh AAC audio is now converted directly to MP3 without an intermediate wave 
file

0.22
BBC Radio Provider
min Significantly reduced CPU usage while downloading and converting.
enh Added option to have BBC Radio programmes saved in AAC when available.

which seem to corroborate my belief ; outputting original AAC file was added 
as a
user option from v0.22 onwards.

 Get_iPlayer tries to download an audio stream in its native format (defined 
by the --(radio)modes
switch, see futher down the second link dinkypumpkin kindly provided to 
you), so as to preserve
the quality. FYI, AAC LC is a far superior (lossy) audio codec to LAME MP3 
(at same bitrate);
transcoding from lossy AAC LC to lossy MP3 keeping the same bitrate will 
result in loss of quality,
easily perceived if, e.g., you have your PC/laptop connected to a Hi-Fi 
system.
 And if you are a fan of Radio 3 and in the UK, AOD offerings from this come 
in 320kbps AAC LC -
the --aactomp3 switch (even if a flavour of  --mp3vbr is used) will 
"degenerate" those significantly.
 Moreover, transcoding in general uses high CPU and more time is needed for 
your audio file to be
finished (this depends on your machine's specs); an on-the-fly conversion 
was also suggested to me
by mailing list member "bat guano" some months ago, this involves the CLI 
though, not the front-end.

 M4A files are tagged fully in GiP by AtomicParsley, whereas MP3 ones are 
tagged (in a satisfactory
but not as rich scheme) by the MP3::Tag perl module. If it is full info that 
you want, stick with M4As.
 You did not mention your OS, but in Windows a great many software players 
support M4As (OTTOMH
 iTunes, Winamp, VLC, RealPlayer, WMP11+, MPC-HC, MPC-BE and others, more 
niche...).
 So if your current setup is capable of M4A playback, you should stick to 
that and not transcode - I guess my
advice extends to all new converts from RD!
 I personally transcode only when I need to use an old/cheap portable audio 
player, which has support only
for MP3, WMA & WAV.

Cheers,
Vangelis.