[mizuvo]

Hi Guys,

I know WAV and AIFFs are the best uncompressed formats out there to rip your production CDs.

My question is that I have alot of songs that are already in MP3s, can I convert them into AIFFs or Apple lossless. THere is an option on Itunes to convert MP3 into AIFFs. Would they sound better because the file was originally, at least from what i know to be MP3.

Bottomline, Lossless and Aiff files are great coz they can be encoded into any bitrate for different memory consumption, but can the reverse be done?
i.e. converting current MP3s back into Aiffs or Lossless?

Thanks guys

calvin

 

[Solid Snake]

I really doubt the reversal can be done...At least getting the same quality as uploading from a cd and converting ripping it as lossless

Lets say you take a picture and you open it with paint, the size of the picture is 1024 x 768. If you shrink that picture to 600 x 400, then resize it to 1024 x 768, it would usually look pixalated compared to the original size even though it was the same size before.

I imagine the same would apply to sound...

This is at least from my experience...

 

[krmathis]

You can certainly decode your MP3's and place them i an AIFF container, or encode to Apple Lossless. But it will just be a waste of time and space. The data lost when encoding to MP3 are lost forever. So the AIFF or Apple Lossless file will just sound the same as the MP3, but occupy 2-10 times the file size.

In short. If you want AIFF or Apple Lossless, you want to rip the audio CD straight to those formats/codecs.

 

[trickywombat]

Lossless (FLAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV) files are like RAW files on your digital camera.
MP3 files are like highly compressed JPEG files on your digital camera.

Going from RAW to JPEG, you lose information that you cannot recover. Likewise, even at high bitrates, converting a lossless file to an MP3 file, the program that does the conversion will toss out audio information you can never recover from the MP3 file.

When you convert an MP3 file to a lossless file, the lossless file will sound, in theory, exactly like the MP3 file but use more resources (storage, processing).

 

[mizuvo]

got that... Thanks guys...

Calvin

 

[krmathis]

You're welcome.
..and by the way; Welcome to Head-Fi!

 

[mizuvo]

Thanks for the welcome... Awesome forum.

Hoping to learn alot from all hu head-fiers...

Calvin