Originally Posted By: Pat Marr

Thanks for weighing in Mario! Hope you are doing well!

What got me thinking about this was Christmas carols. Somewhere along the line my wife ripped all her holiday CDs to mp3, and I was listening to the MP3s. The same songs on the CD sparkle. The MP3s, not so much.

When I'm learning cover songs from MP3, then listen to a better quality recording of the same song, I can frequently hear parts that are just not distinguishable in the MP3.


Thanx Pat, we are all doing well here. Hope you are doing well also.

The real question is at what compression rate were those MP3s made? Many people can't tell the difference between a compression rate of 320kbps and a wav. Anything below that is a gamble.

Originally Posted By: Pat Marr

I wonder if asking "can *I* hear the difference?" might be the wrong question. I already know my own hearing is impaired. But my audience...? If my end product was a CD, then I'd need WAVs. But more and more, people listen to streamed music, which is compressed. Which leads to the argument about compressing a file that's already compressed. At the end of the logic, unless you are a hobbyist who has no audience, it makes sense to work with wavs, assuming the budget allows. If the song gets compressed later by a streaming service, at least that will be the first and only compression.



I agree with using wavs for CDs and songs that will be streamed. For live performances I might go with compressed backing tracks, unless storage is no problem. There is a lot of noise when performing so the absolute top quality, wavs, may not be necessary. But that would depend on who is in the audience. Playing for John Q. Public at a bar MP3s would suffice. But playing for a group of music producers is a completely different scenario.

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