Hi...new to this forum.

I haven't seen a clear explanation of how this works.

Does a MP3 to CDA converter convert the MP3 to analog, then digitize to CDA? Maybe this doesn't make sense since the computer works only with digital data?

Or does it convert directly to CDA?

Is the expected CDA quality the same as the MP3? Or is there an additional loss in sound quality.

On hydrogenaudio, we have this amazing thing. Its called a search button.

Some links to get you started:

The Hydrogenaudio FAQ:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....7516#entry74068

Specific FAQ topic to your question:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....=ST&f=15&t=6938

Welcome to HydrogenAudio! Please enjoy your stay.

Thanks for the links. I DID use search, but the word I didn't search on was "decoder" so I didn't easily find what was looking for.

So is it fair to say that MP3 decoders have variable quality and it is at least possible that a CDA created from an MP3 is worse sounding than the MP3?

Assume that an MP3 decoder is used that is broken.

To make the MP3 data audible, the decoder does its job and turns the MP3 stream into a PCM stream. The PCM stream can either be directly fed to the soundcard to be turned into an analog signal (or whatever the soundcard is set to do), or it can be dropped into a WAV (or onto a CD, also in PCM).

The WAV would, in this case, sound the same as the the MP3. Where you could hypothetically end up with a difference is if a different MP3 decoder is used for playback than is used to convert to CD.

But it really shouldn't happen that you get a broken decoder. Other considerations are if you have a plain burning program do your MP3 -> WAV (PCM) -> CD job, versus having something like Foobar2000 (and its more advanced settings) do your playback.

Back to the original question, when an MP3 is decoded, to be sent to either the sound card or to a CD, it should be a purely digital series of steps.

CD Audio & MP3 @ Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Digital_Audio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3

EDIT - Added some Wikipedia links to the end.

Decoders don't really have variable quality. The standard clearly defines what a decoder should do. Some just have some extra features like dither that can very slightly improve quality, but are extremely unlikely to ever be noticed except for very special cases.

The quality loss happens primarily in the encoder. But yes, a CD made from an MP3 will always have lower quality then the source CD (since it sounds exactly like the MP3).