OT: Working with MP3

[rwav]

Dear Knowledgeable Friends,

I wonder if saving MP3 everytime you make a change to it has the same result than saving a JPEG several time: data loss and quality decreasing at each saving.

PTE synchronisation function forces us to merge music data in one file, using an external mixing software. So I ended up working and saving several time as I add components.

I am about to recommend doing all the work with WAV and save in MP3 at the last minute. Does it make sense?

[Guest guru]

Yes rwav, all what you say is exact. And with mp3 files the quality loss is often even more serious than with jpeg!

[JRR]

rawv:

As Guido says mp3 is "lossey" stuff.

I work with wav files until I get it "right" and then save for posterity the last mp3 and wav versions.

Of course in the meantime I plugged up with (many) different versions of the wav and mp3 files as I always want to keep earlier versions to go back to in case I make an error.

(that can get serious if you are working with 30 minute sound files - I found that out the hard way )

[HaroldB]

I do it a bit differently. I create a custom MP3 for each slideshow I do, and I also create a text file that says exactly how what I did in CoolEdit to create the file.

Each time I want to change the slideshow sound file, I recreate it from scratch.

It sounds like a lot of extra work, but it turns out to be really simple.

Incidentally, there is a scripts feature in CoolEdit which sounds like it will completely automate this. I haven't found the time to try it, though.

Harold