[AGR]

I have a friend that does not have an MP3 capable CD player, nor an MP3 player. So; I was wondering if converting back from MP3 to regular audio was possible. I have some MP3 music tracks I downloaded from eMusic, that I would like to convert for them.

Thanks!

 

[duff138]

yes. convert them to .wav files

 

[AGR]

Quote:

Originally posted by duff138 yes. convert them to .wav files

Excellent! So; I think I can do that with my Roxio EZ CD Creator 6 software.

 

[cmascatello]

You can just select the "Burn Music CD" option in Roxio or Nero's packages and drag the files you want in to the project pane -- no need to convert your MP3s to WAVs on your own. Be sure that you do NOT select the "Make MP3 CD" option, b/c this will essentially burn a data CD consisting of MP3 files and not .CDAs that standard CDPs need.

 

[lindrone]

Just realize by burning MP3 onto CD's.. you're not getting CD quality music, you're still getting lossy compressed music.

 

[Shurenuff]

Just wondering, if you convert an MP3 file to a WAV file, do you further degrade the sound quality?

 

[Lando]

Only if the conversion software does a poor job. Some mp3 decoders sound signifigantly better than others. However, the major quality loss will be if you reencode those wav files as mp3 or another lossy format.

 

[cmascatello]

Quote:

Originally posted by Shurenuff Just wondering, if you convert an MP3 file to a WAV file, do you further degrade the sound quality?

You should not see any change in the sound quality when going to an uncompressed format like WAV, provided that the decoder you are using is not a hunk of junk -- but I have yet to find one that does not do the decoding acceptably.

 

[Shurenuff]

Thanks guys! So it sounds like Exact Audio Copy should be fine.

 

[AGR]

'Worked perfect! Thanks for the responses. I just elected 'Music' in Roxio. I just selected 'Creator Classic', then under PROJECT, Clicked 'Music', then 'Music CD'. I clicked and dragged the tracks down, and burned them. Easy!

 

[Music Fanatic]

Quote:

Originally posted by Lando Only if the conversion software does a poor job. Some mp3 decoders sound signifigantly better than others.

Really? MP3 decoding is completely algorithmically defined. Certainly, different encoders can yield different results, but for decoding, they all should sound the same (unless one is buggy).

 

[hciman77]

Quote:

Originally posted by Music Fanatic Really? MP3 decoding is completely algorithmically defined. Certainly, different encoders can yield different results, but for decoding, they all should sound the same (unless one is buggy).

Interesting

I would have thought that. But a while back I discovered the MAD plug-in for winamp and I have to say it does (to me anyway) sound *very slightly* better than the default winamp decoder. They claim big listenable differences - I am not convinced by that and it is difficult to A/B reliably unless you can be arsed to output several copies of both to Wav and burn to CD and play blindfold in random mode while someone in a white coat scores your response

http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/

http://ff123.net/madchallenge.html


http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/overall.html

 

[lindrone]

There's a difference between a MP3 decoder that's "writing data" as opposed to a MP3 decoder that's sending sound data into the soundcard. There's more components involved in sending the sound into the soundcard (soundcard driver, driver mode, using Window's built in wave-out mechanism, directsound, or ASIO drivers) that determines the final sound "quality" that comes out.

When writing the MP3 simply into a WAV file though, the digital data itself should not vary at all from decoder to decoder... that should always be the same regardless.

 

[hciman77]

Quote:

Originally posted by cmascatello You should not see any change in the sound quality when going to an uncompressed format like WAV, provided that the decoder you are using is not a hunk of junk -- but I have yet to find one that does not do the decoding acceptably.

When MP3 was newish (1999/2000) I experimented converting an audio track to Wav and then

Wav--->Mp3--->Wav--->Mp3 (Rx)

It took 7 or 8 repeats but I did get it to sound like poo in the end using winamp