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MYSTERY:a burned disc is it WAV or Mp3 (SOLVED #32)

post #1 of 34
8/27/08 at 11:09pm
Thread Starter 
I need the steps you take to find out if an unmarked disc was recorded in the WAV or Mp3 format....thanks
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post #2 of 34
8/27/08 at 11:12pm
1: Stick it in a cd player that does not play MP3s
2: Press Play
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post #3 of 34
8/27/08 at 11:33pm
Thread Starter 

MYSTERY

was thinking more along the lines of:
you open up in computer:
go to to properties:
it reads out what the rate is,
something along that line as the players I have all play Mp3s, wav etc...
thanks for reply, though as I was not clear in wanting to use of my computer.
I lack the info to go to the right place or the step by step sequence, etc...
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post #4 of 34
8/27/08 at 11:34pm
Or insert it into a PC optical drive. You can see the file extensions on the files.
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post #5 of 34
8/28/08 at 12:35am
or, you know, if there's more than 72 minutes of audio. or if there's 72 minutes of audio and only 1/10th of the disc burnt.
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post #6 of 34
8/28/08 at 12:43am
Thread Starter 

MYSTERY

thanks again guys
I wish Windows was a little easier to figure out sometimes
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post #7 of 34
8/28/08 at 1:10am
Quote:
1: Stick it in a cd player that does not play MP3s
It will not play wav disc either if it wasn't written as audio-cd.
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post #8 of 34
8/28/08 at 9:25am
Of course, if there was actually mp3 files burned to the disk, this would be an easy one.

When I read the OP, I thought they were audio tracks burned to the disc... and he wants to know if they were actually lossless wav tracks or mp3 => wav tracks missing lots of info.

I'm not sure what the best way to do this is... Don't people actually open up a sample of the waveform in an editor and literally judge it from there?
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post #9 of 34
8/28/08 at 11:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zorander View Post
Or insert it into a PC optical drive. You can see the file extensions on the files.
Exactly!
Pop it into your computer and look at the file endings. .wav = WAVE, .mp3 = MP3
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post #10 of 34
8/28/08 at 12:48pm
I'm pretty sure he's referring to CD's burned as CDDA.

In which case you could use Trader's Little Helper. It has a utility that will check wav files to tell you the likelihood that it's from a lossy source.
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post #11 of 34
8/28/08 at 5:14pm
Should be easy enough if you look at the spectrals. mp3s usually have hard cut offs in the extreme high end that lossless files don't have.
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post #12 of 34
8/28/08 at 7:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by monolith View Post
Should be easy enough if you look at the spectrals. mp3s usually have hard cut offs in the extreme high end that lossless files don't have.
We have a winner ! even a really good MP3 will drop off rapidly after 19K or 20K, in theory with LAME 3.92 you can set the low pass to 22.05 but whenever I have tried this it will still truncate high frequencies abnormally while a wav file will slope off more gradually.

In later versions of LAME the ability to set really high low pass filters has been more or less disabled.
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post #13 of 34
8/28/08 at 7:49pm
i thought this was headfi where we would all say: if it was originally from mp3, then it will sound crap.

honestly, there has to be a tool if you are worried, but if you find the sound to be good enough, i would not worry too much
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post #14 of 34
8/28/08 at 8:32pm
Thread Starter 

MYSTERY

Actually I seem to be under a misapprehension: I thought commercial discs, (or are they called Red Book), are WAV files or at least 1411. From that, you can change them to lets say an MP3 file at 192.
However, you can't go from lets say an MP3 file at 128 to a WAV file. I thought that you lose quality or it just can't be done.
What I tried to ask, (not properly), is how you could put in a burned disc, (NOT knowing if it's either a WAV or MP3), and find out what the original type and quality or speed of the disc was made at. You could then adjust your quality as needed.
I think I should learn more about the format, and how to mix, edit, and fade till I know how to ask something correctly. I hope I didn't waste anyones time and thanks for the answers. I just might go to Google and check this out with a little more detail before I try anything....
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post #15 of 34
8/28/08 at 8:47pm
You're correct in that a compressed file cannot be "returned" to lossless, the bits have been thrown away forever.

I don't understand that last question: "and find out what the original type and quality or speed of the disc was made at".

If your disc in question was an mp3 file burned as CDA, it could be compressed to mp3 again which would be a very bad thing and sound awful. This would be obvious.
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