Midnight Oil

[Powderworks] Re: NMOC. MP3 to Wav

Miron Mizrahi mironmizrahi at yahoo.com
Tue Nov 18 14:12:54 MST 2003


> Hi there,
> Sorry about the NMOC, but can anyone answer a question or 2 on MP3
> and Wav files. I have loads of WAV files using up my memory. If I
> convert them to MP3 files to save space, can I burn straight from
> an MP3 file to a normal CD disc, or does it only burn as an MP3
> disc? Also is the sound quality of an MP3 less than a wav file?
> Thanks, I appreciate any help I can get.
> Stephen> 

mp3 is lossy compression. this means you can compress wav to mp3 to
save space on your hard drive. however you will not be able to get
the wav file back by decompressing. you will get a wav file but it
will not be the same. in addition, compressing to mp3 and then
burning onto an audio cd will not save you anything. the burning
software (assuming it can do it) will decompress on the fly and burn
a wav file. the resulting wav file will be approx. the same size as
the original one.

as far as quality consider this - a wav file contains 704k of info
per second of music. if you compress to mp3 using the ratio that is
considered as the min. required for decent sound quality you will
end up with a file that contains 128k of info per second of music.
roughly 1/6. in most cases, and in particular for studio recordings,
this is not an issue unless you have very good ears and/or very good
gear. if you are considering a live, bootleg recording then you will
get (often) noticeable degradation.

I would suggest you look into formats such as SHN and LPAC. they do
not compress as much as mp3 but they are lossless - i.e. you can
always get the wav file back. they both have winamp plugins so you
can still play them on your pc.

in any case and under not circumstances should you trade live,
bootleg recordins that have been sourced from an mp3 source.

I hope this helps





=====
Miron

   How could people get so unkind?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree