There's a few things here though, the loss in quality is not down to just recording to mp3 or to wav....i would think the major cause is down to the D/A and A/D conversion (digital / analog and vice versa).

because cmay has re-recorded his recorded mp3 again and again, you lose a lot of quality through the source player (CDJ or whatever) and the mixer and the plugs. when you buy a song and are recording to a mix as putboy has said, you will never really go past step 2 of cmay's test. this will happen regardless of 320kbps mp3 or wav file. my guess would be that putting a 320kbps mp3 and a wav through a mixer and recording it, and repeating that process would result in a very similar (and severe) loss in quality. you wouldn't need to do it a lot of times.

good rule of thumb is always keep as high a resolution as you can, starting with the source file, and then as high a resolution sample rate while recording. key here being that there is no point compressing a 320mp3 to a wav, BUT there is a difference in sampling/recording that mp3 (through mixers) into a wav on your computer.

debate is then back to the 320kbps vs wav, which has been debated many times before. my stance is that there is no audible difference unless you are in a controlled environment and have very experienced ears.

no idea if that made sense or not. hopefully somebody understood it!

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if you are just playing i would say that it is not a big deal (unless it is on a huge system where you do lose a bit on the lower end with mp3), but if you do edits, wav and flacc is way way better.

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quote:

Originally posted by b i n k u n There's a few things here though, the loss in quality is not down to just recording to mp3 or to wav....i would think the major cause is down to the D/A and A/D conversion (digital / analog and vice versa). because cmay has re-recorded his recorded mp3 again and again, you lose a lot of quality through the source player (CDJ or whatever) and the mixer and the plugs. when you buy a song and are recording to a mix as putboy has said, you will never really go past step 2 of cmay's test. this will happen regardless of 320kbps mp3 or wav file. my guess would be that putting a 320kbps mp3 and a wav through a mixer and recording it, and repeating that process would result in a very similar (and severe) loss in quality. you wouldn't need to do it a lot of times. good rule of thumb is always keep as high a resolution as you can, starting with the source file, and then as high a resolution sample rate while recording. key here being that there is no point compressing a 320mp3 to a wav, BUT there is a difference in sampling/recording that mp3 (through mixers) into a wav on your computer. debate is then back to the 320kbps vs wav, which has been debated many times before. my stance is that there is no audible difference unless you are in a controlled environment and have very experienced ears. no idea if that made sense or not. hopefully somebody understood it!

There should have been NO D/A or A/D conversion in my test, because I was using a software recorder with my PC, with the file ON my PC. No CD to PC, or any such thing like that. There is no analog part of my test.

Though you are right. You should never be running your mix through recording after recording. I was just making an example that recording from a 320kbps track to another 320kbps track will lose audio quality, and not sustain the quality of the original 320's that were used in the mix. Recording to something less than 320 will degrade the audio quality even more on top of that.

EDIT: Actually, I may have misread your post. Yes, A/D and D/A conversions will happen when recording from Mixer or other external device. If that's what you meant, than nevermind my first statement, and yes there will be other variables involved that will degrade audio quality even more.

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Last edited by cmay119 on Dec-15-2008 at 07:43

I started a thread on this a while back. I think if you search you can find it. I'll give you my input though. I personally always try to buy wavs, or cds from cdjshop. I don't care for beatport's wav handing fee. The sites I mainly shop are dancerecords.com and junodownload.

quote:

Originally posted by PutBoy Although wav is a lossless format, it's still digital, and does have a resolution, so you do lose some information, even if it's a little. If you would've done what Cmay did with wav's instead of mp3's you would've had to do it a lot more times to get the same results, but you would get there.

Wavs are based on a lossless algorithmn(up to a certain resolution)... wheras mp3's decide to lose less useable information and etc.

Think of it as if you took lossless screenshots... and then kept printscreening them again, your not going to lose any information each time you resave it. So no, converting from one lossless format to another does not lose ANY information at all (e.g. wav to wav, wav to flac). A lot less people would use flac if they thought that converting from wav to flac would not sound EXACTLY the same as the original.

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