ignorant question about mp3 to wav conversion

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czeskleba
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ignorant question about mp3 to wav conversion

Postby czeskleba » Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:58 am

All right, forgive the relative ignorance of how digital audio works, but I have a question. If I have a 256 kbps mp3, and I convert it to a .wav file, and then convert it back to a 256 kbps mp3, will the final result be identical to the mp3 I started with, or does the process of converting formats back and forth cause some type of loss?

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lukpac
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Postby lukpac » Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:42 am

You'll get loss. Kind of like saving and re-saving a JPEG.
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Rspaight
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Postby Rspaight » Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:44 pm

Yep. You'll get generational loss with most any kind of lossy compression.

It's not really "converting formats" per se that causes the loss, it's re-encoding an already encoded file. (The intermediate WAV step is neutral, equivalent to decoding the MP3 file before re-encoding it.)

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czeskleba
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Postby czeskleba » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:21 pm

Thanks guys.