Zoom Gear & Home Recording Forum

I've reviewed everything I found searching this site and still can't get a song from my PS-02 converted to MP3 so that I can post on MySpace and/or SoundClick. I did manage to transform the recorded tracks to Wave but had no luck navigating the maze with the drums/bass Midi.

Since I had already mixed down onto a Sony Minidisc I figured "Why not load that back onto the PS-02". So far so good. My song was in stereo on tracks 2 & 3 and didn't sound like it lost much quality in the process.

Then I went to work with two wave tracks using WavePad editing software. I thought I managed to combine the two mono wave tracks into stereo using the the 'mix file' feature. Kinda sounded like stereo. Did a little tweeking - EQ, amplify, normalize and this sounded good.

However, when I saved the finished song to a file, the sound deteriorated and when I tried to convert to MP3 using SwitchPlus; ouch! not good. Both the WavePad and Switch Plus are from a company called NCH Software.

I don't know what else to do. Others on this discussion page seem to have achieved good results converting a PS-02 song to MP3. Help!!!

If you haven't done so already, download the Card Manager software for the PS-02:
http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/download/ ... e/ps02.php

Use that to convert to wav - don't forget to specify 128/44 when you convert to wav.

Next, download Audacity:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
For converting to MP3, you'll need the LAME MP3 encoder:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/lame.html

Put the LAME encoder dll anywhere on your computer. In audacity, you'll set it up to find LAME, a one-time deal, after that it knows where it is.

After converting your file(s) to wav using Card Manager, drag-drop them into Audacity and go the file, export, menu and select export project as MP3.

It is important to keep all the bit rates the same (starting with 128/44 makes that easy, see above) or you'll get chipmunks singing your song!

The above method works for sure, and I have never had any problems with it.

Audacity is a very powerful free program. LAME is free. You can't go wrong.

If you are on a Mac, I believe the software is already installed for doing the above - I believe you would use i-Tunes.

I think Howard missed this one. Drums and bass are not stored as audio but as data patterns. To get the sound, you have to go through the bounce process. (I don't know exactly how this works on the PS-02.) You can either bounce them separately and mix that wav together with the other files in Audacity (better sound quality) or bounce everything on the PS-02 to a stereo track that you then bring to the PC with Card Manager.

I hope that made sense. Good luck.

When you are done, post your track in the New Songs section!

Oh absulutely right Albert - I blew it - sorry. You need to bounce the drums/bass to a v-take then do what I said. The beauty of Card Manager is you can select any or all of the v-takes to be converted to wav, mix them in Audacity, etc.. My apologies to the original poster.

Thanks for this. I will download audacity and lame. Besides the NCH software I was using wasn't giving me good results (and the freeby expires soon and I don't think I'm buying). It will be much better to have free software that really is free (and works).

I tried the bounce trick for the bass/drums and almost lost the song. I probably wasn't doing it right. Can one of you give a bit more detail on how it's done, i.e., step by step instructions.

I already posted on the two sites I referred to without the bass/drums.

Thanks Howard and storpotaten

Ok here I go putting on my teacher hat:

go here:
http://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=6972
PS: bookmark that page

about eight lines down you'll find this:
http://www.2090.org/zoom/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=29

Now do your homework.

Audacity and Lame did the job. Sounds pretty good (sound-wise, anyways) too. Now I can actually use my PS-02 and don't need to "upgrade" to post on the net. I've posted at myspace.com/anonimo1949 and soundclick.com/anonimo1949 if you are interested in hearing the results. Thanks again for the help.

Sounds like you got the bitrate problem solved in version II.

For new songs you want reviewed on this forum, make a new post in New Songs. Find your soundclkick page, and copy/paste the address into the post. Say what you recorded it on, and what type of comments you would like to hear. In other words, follow the directiions in the sticky at the top of the New Songs section.

Cheers and congratulations - you are farther along than many newbies at this point.