mp3 or wav file?

[Sahara Blue Orchestra]

I would like to take some high end remastered cds (mfsl/jrvg/other) and transfer them to cd-r for personal use. Is it advisable to save the songs to my pc library as wav or mp3 files? Which will yield a truer sound when played back in my stereo system? What happens when a file is converted from mp3 to wav?

I am finally getting to some of tasks many of you do all the time. So thanks in advance for any assistance!

[Sahara Blue Orchestra]

Ooops, should have put this in Audio Forum.

And it is clearly beyond me to change it, so hope you'll take pity on me and help out here.

[AfricaBrass]

With mp3, you're going to lose quality. So... for archival purposes, I wouldn't recommend it.

Converting files from .mp3 to .wav doesn't result in a loss of quality from the .mp3 itself, but there will be a difference between the new .wav file and the original .wav file. The original .wav will be of higher quality.

There are compression formats out there that are lossless. A couple examples are .shn or .flac - They seem to be about half the size of .wav files

Most of my cds are in storage (in another state ) right now, so what I've been doing is ripping my cds to 192/kbs .mp3 files for use on my computer and 40gb mp3 player since that's where I do most of my listening.

[vibes]

If you're looking for the truest sound, .wav files are definitely the way to go. mp3's are compressed and you will be able to hear compression artifacts, especially if you're listening to mp3's at high volume, or on a revealing system.

If you're looking at trying to maximize the amount of music on a hard drive, however, mp3's are the way to go. One song recorded in .wav format can take up as much space (or more) as an entire album encoded in mp3 format (depending on the bitrate, of course).

[Sahara Blue Orchestra]

Thanks vibes and africabrass! One last question if that is allright with you. If someone has sent me a cd-r with mp3 files, can I, or should I, convert them to wav?

[couw]

if the player in your stereo setup is capable of mp3 playback there is no reason to convert them. If your player does not support the format, you will have to convert them IF you want to play them on the player in your main set-up. It is highly likely that if you burn an AUDIO CD using these mp3 files that the burning software will convert the files.

Alternatively, you can hook up your computer to your main system and use it as yet another component of your setup. Nice if your want to play around with compilations or want to play a long, prepared list of tunes without having to change the disk all the time.

[Dan Gould]

Definitely extract the CDA files to wav, then burn your CDR.

[Sahara Blue Orchestra]

Thanks all. Now I just have to find the time to finish the project. Ha!

[mmilovan]

With today's technology, where you can find relatively large amunts of memory for cheap I found mp3 useless while archiving is concerned.

Once you have wav compressed to mp3 it is ireversible to get it back in original uncompressed form. Just as if you have for an example tiff or bmp bitmap and convert them to highly compressed, low quality jpg format, you never can have it as originals again.

[RDK]

With today's technology, where you can find relatively large amunts of memory for cheap I found mp3 useless while archiving is concerned.

Once you have wav compressed to mp3 it is ireversible to get it back in original uncompressed form. Just as if you have for an example tiff or bmp bitmap and convert them to highly compressed, low quality jpg format, you never can have it as originals again.

First rule of mp3 is that it is not an archival format. DO NOT use mp3 to archive audio files. Of course it degrades the sound - that's the cost for compression and easier storage.

Secondly, I'll disagree with Dan and recommend against extracting to wave... unless you have to. Obviously you need to if you want to have a CD-R that will play in a regular CD player, but if you're using anything capable of playing mp3s - either an iPod, and mp3-compatible boombox, or your computer - you might as well leave the files as mp3s and take advantage of the main benefit of mp3 compression.