🎚️ Mixing or mastering MP3 files
• Why it’s a terrible idea?
• What are the differences with WAV?
• Is there audible difference?
• Can you convert MP3 to WAV?
Let’s discuss🔥🔥
What is WAV?
Basically WAV is original uncompressed audio.
What is MP3?
MP3 is a compressed audio format.
What does that mean?
It means we are getting rid of the most audio information, which is not affecting the listening experience that much.
Quick clarification: compression in this post is not a dynamic processing that I covered the other day.
MP3 can contain about 10% of original information due to compression
Yet you can hear the difference between MP3 and WAV on at least somewhat decent headphones or speakers, and it still won’t be very noticeable.
Most of the people won’t tell that.
And even pros listening purely MP3 without comparison to WAV won’t guess every time correctly
Because you never know if its slightly worse mixing or the result of audio compression
So, a good quality compressed file works absolutely fine for listening, and on absolute most audio systems or headphones there won’t be any drastic noticeable difference
What’s the problem with MP3 in mixing then?
Mixing a single file MP3 (or WAV) song is not possible because it’s not mixing
Hope it’s clear
The problem with mixing MP3 stems or mastering MP3 mix is that 90% of info is gone
While it’s fine for listening, building a new mix or master from that 10% of info will result in much much worse sound after processing
More than that, you will leave 10% from the sound again after render to MP3
You can’t build anything NEW from compressed audio and hope for the same minimum difference
If you try to convert MP3 to WAV, you are not getting no information back
You just get the same MP3 file represented as WAV
That’s why conversion wouldn’t help to increase quality, and you always have to request uncompressed audio for both mixing or mastering.
Hope you found this helpful!
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