Originally Posted by Superkid11
So you're saying even if a song was already an mp3 to begin with, if it's recorded from the soundcard in an uncoded format and is encoded to mp3 it'll loose more data? ... great, now you've gone and made me paranoid.  |
Well, first of all, songs don't
come in MP3 format... There will always be a "perfect" version, usually the original master copy that's recorded, that comes first. It may be compressed before it gets to you... like when someone encodes an MP3 and puts it up on the internet. But again there was a "perfect" lossless version to begin with. The audio data stored on audio CDs for example is lossless (or nearly lossless), but then when you rip it to MP3, you lose some of the audio data that was present on the original CD.
And yes, if you open an MP3 file in a sound editor and just hit File > Save, File > Save, File > Save repeatedly over and over, you will lose some audio information each time you do that. That's why it's not a good practice to take something that's already in MP3 format, modify it in some way, then resave it as a new MP3 file. Additional audio information will be lost in the process.
Originally Posted by Superkid11
... ah, sorry for flying off topic like that. I'm downloading the FLAC version now. Now that you've told me all this I probably will notice a difference.  |
No problem. If it means anything, a couple of people have told me that the FLAC version of Fool's Gold sounds considerably sharper, clearer, and all around better than its MP3-compressed counterpart, so I hope you enjoy it.
