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How Can I Compress Audio Files On My Mac?

Due to increasing vision problems I’ve been attaching some Voice Memos to emails to friends. I haven’t figured out how to make the files smaller though and sometimes my email server won’t send them due to them being too large. Is there an easy way to compress the voice files on my Mac Mini?
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Gus Toole

Comments: 3 Responses to “How Can I Compress Audio Files On My Mac?”

    8 years ago

    You can compress audio files on your Mac with GarageBand. Start an "Empty Project" and then drag the file to a new track. Then choose Share, Export Song to Disk. From there you can choose AAC, MP3 or AIFF. Choose a lower quality setting for higher compression. So a 64 kBit/s AAC or MP3 file will be high compression.
    The problem is that the voice memos files are already very compressed. I wasn't able to save any space at all by doing this with some sample voice memos I just tried it on. When I examined them in QuickTime Player, I found that they were already 64 kBit/s AAC files.
    I tried using the free audio editor Audacity and set the quality to the lowest quality variable compression. I was able to get the file size down somewhat.
    I think a better option for you is to simply stop attaching large or even medium-sized files to emails at all. I avoid that at all costs. Use a cloud solution like DropBox to put the file online and then send a link. This will eliminate the problem and be much nicer for the receiver will only download the file when they want it (like on their desktop, not mobile).

    Joel Anderson
    8 years ago

    As an alternative, you might consider letting your Mac transcribe your voice into text for your email.

    Gus Toole
    8 years ago

    Thanks Gary for you detailed response. I agree that Dropbox is probably my best solution after all. And thanks Joel for your suggestion. I've been using that some but find that I still need to proofread so it sort of defeats the purpose.

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