Reducing the filesize of a WAD with music?

[amperbee]

I've made a WAD with a single map, and I've placed a song in it.
It works flawlessly, but the problem is when looking at the size of the wad. You can't download ~3.5 MB of music, right?
I've made the song be mono, which splitted the size in half, making the file be around 1 MB and something. Then I also changed the sample rate from 44100 to 22050 which finally made the WAD be under the 1 MB and making it able to be downloaded.
I've used Wadzip too, doesn't help a lot.

The map itself weighs around 100 KB, by the way. Compressing it with Wadzip yields a 50 KB file. There seems to be a vanilla song that fits with the theme of the map, but I would need to use a custom song.

The question is, is there any way to reduce this WAD size (with music) even more?

 

[742mph]

3.5 MB is well under this forum's file size limit, which I think is 32 MB. It would also be far from the largest mod ever posted here, and more than an order of magnitude smaller than SRB2 itself. Your map should be fine as is.

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

I've made the song be mono, which splitted the size in half, making the file be around 1 MB and something. Then I also changed the sample rate from 44100 to 22050 which finally made the WAD be under the 1 MB and making it able to be downloaded.

Please, please don't use mono music over stereo music when available, and please also use 44100 hertz.

Anyway, depending on the program you use to make the music a sound file and the format you use, setting the "quality" (but not sample rate) lower (or "compression" higher or whatever) can dramatically decrease file-size without any audible difference.
In AudaCity, I once tried exporting OGG files with the quality set to 10. Sounded awesome, but the file-size was enormous (though I don't remember how enormous). Then I tried exporting with the quality set to 1. It sounded just as wesome, even though the file-size had dramatically decreased.
(If you're already exporting the music at a low quality, then I can't help, sorry. But still, please have stereo music at 44100 hertz.)

 

[Mystic]

If you're trying to make your file small for netplay downloading from the server, you should not include music. MIDI may be an option, but our MIDI support isn't nearly as good as it used to be.

 

[Sapheros]

On the other hand, try to upload the wad on one of the doom wad websites for Doomseeker and redirecting some of your friends to use Doomseeker's Wadseeker function, which can help find your wad for them.

 

[MosaicMario]

It depends on the music but ogg vorbis is a commonly used codec for music in video games as it has low file sizes and good quality, even on low bitrates.

In AudaCity, I once tried exporting OGG files with the quality set to 10. Sounded awesome, but the file-size was enormous (though I don't remember how enormous). Then I tried exporting with the quality set to 1. It sounded just as wesome, even though the file-size had dramatically decreased.

If you export an ogg file in AudaCity on quality set to 10 you basically set the bitrate to 500 kb/s (this is about half of the bitrate that an average lossless music format like flac or wav has). If you look at most video games that use ogg files for music ingame they are usually at 160 kb/s, sometimes 128 kb/s and unlike file formats such as mp3 it still sounds good (mp3 starts to muffle at around 192 kb/s in some cases) and also has fewer filesize. Also on most audio systems you won't hear the difference between a 500 kb/s ogg file and a 128 kb/s ogg file, and even less ingame.
In most cases you can even go lower with the bitrate, the music of GFZ1 for example is encoded on 64 kb/s. But you should not go too low with your bitrate, you need to find the perfect threshold between quality and filesize and this may vary from song to song. Note that SRB2 only accepts ogg files with a sample rate of 44100Hz, else you will get your ears raped.