Am I correct that decompressing to WAV cannot reverse loss of quality?, [TOS #6: was "mp3 to wav quality" in General Audio] Options

[Paul77]

Hi

I have just used winamp to convert some mp3 files to wav for recording to cd (as the tracks are only available on Amazon as mp3 currently).

Wav's are 7 or 8 times the size of mp3's due to the compression. When you decompress to wav can you only ever get the quality that was present in the mp3. That is when the mp3 was created from the original source some loss of quality is inevitable and decompressing to wav presumably cannot reverse that loss of quality so my wav files presumably cannot sound as good as on a purchased CD.

Can someone confirm this is about right or have I missed something?

[greynol]

If such software doesn't honor gapless decoding, or if it does but the tracks weren't properly cut to CDDA frame boundaries then I wouldn't rely on it when dealing with gapless material.

[Paul77]

I was using XP CD burner software so I don't think it will convert from mp3 to wav.
Out of interest I'll try converting an mp3 to wav for a track I have on a purchased CD
to see if can tell the difference (mp3 encoding is supposed to cut out frequencies that
are not audible and be efficient in compressing the rest)!





This post has been edited by Paul77: Apr 18 2012, 16:59

[dhromed]

I was using XP CD burner software so I don't think it will convert from mp3 to wav.

CDBurnerXP will be just fine.

[Paul77]

I was using XP CD burner software so I don't think it will convert from mp3 to wav.

CDBurnerXP will be just fine.

Have tried dragging and dropping mp3 file onto cd drive and then clicking on write - it does work in that a track is recorded to disk and it plays on my cd player - so presumably its a wav file but Windows Media Player changed the title to 'Track01.cda' on the disk. I guess this can be changed in the media player.

"That doesn't sound like it would be a proper apples to apples double-blind comparison. To compare mp3 to lossless, you need to create the mp3 from the lossless source and use something like the ABX comparator in fobar2000 in order to prevent expectation bias."

I imagine the mp3 file from Amazon is created from a lossless source.

Have compared an Amazon mp3 track I've on a purchased CD and its quite easy to hear the difference - just in the depth/detail of the bass and detail of the background instruments at the start of the track.

Wonder what SACD would have been like?

[pdq]

Have tried dragging and dropping mp3 file onto cd drive and then clicking on write - it does work in that a track is recorded to disk and it plays on my cd player - so presumably its a wav file but Windows Media Player changed the title to 'Track01.cda' on the disk. I guess this can be changed in the media player.

'Track01.cda' is not what appears on the CD, it is only Windows' way of telling you that the CD contains no track name information.

Sometimes a CD will contain CDText information, which can be displayed by a player, but if you record the CD yourself then it requires that the burning software be capable of adding CDText, and that the track name information be supplied to it in some way.