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

[greynol]

I actually thought that the mp3 algorithm can make use of less information by distorting some sounds with overdrives, and just wondered if this clipping distortion can be exactly or just "approximately" recreated in a WAV file, as a gain higher than 1.00 is simply not possible, but seems to be in mp3 files.

Gain and amplitude are different things. What you are talking about is not gain, just as clipping during decoding to fixed point has nothing to do with a signal being overdriven. Mp3 data is stored as frequency information. Compression is primarily achieved by reducing the precision of this information. Sometimes this reduction in precision causes the time-based data decoded from this frequency-based data to go beyond the values permissible when using fixed point.

This post has been edited by greynol: Apr 22 2012, 05:49