Major loss of quality when encoding Wav to Mp3?

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-- Major loss of quality when encoding Wav to Mp3?

Posted by Trancewave on Mar-12-2003 00:31:

Major loss of quality when encoding Wav to Mp3?

I'm using Steinberg Clean v4.0 to digitally remaster some mp3s and I'm blown away with the results. The remastered tracks sounds exceptionally better than the original 128 bitrate tracks.

Obviously the tracks had to be converted to wav files for me to edit the files. However I noticed that when I re-encode the remastered files back into mp3, I noticed a major loss of quality even when I encode it at 320 bitrate. The new 320 kbit tracks sounds a lot better than the original 128 kbit track but still not as great as the remastered WAV file.

Is this true that you have to put up with some loss of quality when you encode wav files to mp3s? I notice that there is a HUGE difference. Is this true with all cases?

Posted by b i n k u n on Mar-12-2003 01:06:

yup. wav files are as close to the digital representation of the analogc source as you can get. any sort of mp3 (which by its defition, is a compression algorithm that cuts off extraneous frequencies and other stuff) will not be as high quality as a wav. file.

when they 128kbps = CD quality audio, it really isn't. =P marketing ploy. even 320kbps isn't as high a definition as a wav.

Posted by Trancewave on Mar-12-2003 01:15:

quote:
Originally posted by b i n k u n
yup. wav files are as close to the digital representation of the analogc source as you can get. any sort of mp3 (which by its defition, is a compression algorithm that cuts off extraneous frequencies and other stuff) will not be as high quality as a wav. file.

when they 128kbps = CD quality audio, it really isn't. =P marketing ploy. even 320kbps isn't as high a definition as a wav.

thanks for the confirmation. I figured there'd be some loss of quality but until you actually become serious into remastering and producing tracks you just realize how major the loss in quality is. I think my ears have matured quite a bit!! I now realize how badly my mp3s have sounded without me actually knowing. I'm having a blast cleaning and remastering these tracks. They now sound great!

Posted by Trance My Brain on Mar-12-2003 07:00:

my 0.02$ of advice,

when I was playing with TRAKTOR I would encore my tracks from cd to wav but only the one I would be using, if you are just listening music 128 is acceptable but I encore all my cd in 192.

Harddrive are cheap now, get yourself a 40gig just for those massive wav

Posted by digitalbreach on Mar-12-2003 20:54:

when compressing files you always loose some quality.
going from wav >>> mp3
your mostly loosing your hi's
no matter w/ bitrate