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MP3 VS. WAV


TOMMYZ
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Here's one that my teenage son and I fight about. Do you feel there is a noticable difference in the sound quality of an MP3 compared to a WAV file ? I feel that I can hear the difference but my son says "No Way !" I should add that I'm a musician and he runs the sound board at the school theatre. ( and has a low opinion of musicians and actors )

Has anyone else found that they can hear the difference ?

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I haven't been able to tell much difference. It looks like MP3's are here to stay. Not sure why really. Just caught on fast and here we are.

I first started getting familiar with the whole MP3 thing with the original Napster site back before it was considered illegal. It as all so new, people were freely sharing millions of MP3's. It was like the Woodstock of MP3's. :biglaugh:

Some of the downloaded MP3's were not great quality, others were outstanding.

Funny thing is, most people I know who downloaded bunches of MP3's from back then kinda stopped. Not because of the pressure from the recording industry, but because they had enough, they had their fill. Enough was enough.

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Do you mean WMA? WMA-Windows Media Audio is Windows proprietary answer to MP3 file compression. I can tell a difference between mp3 and wma at "CD Quality=128kbps" WMA sounds worse to me. I cannot notice the difference as much at higher settings. The songs I have purchased on

line that are wma (because of the copy protection, I assume) are at 320kbps so they sound fine.

WAV- (Windows Audio Video?) are typically uncompressesd (1411kbps) and are essentially equal to the audio files on a CD so they would sound as good as or better than the highest quality mp3 since their bite rate is 4.4 times greater than the higest mp3 setting-320kbps. If you have a really good ear and are listening for overtones and can hear very high frequencies using exellent headphones or speakers you could probably hear the difference.

Edited by ckeer
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