strumminsix wrote:Okay, so when you guys record it normally takes you many hours to prep a show?
I think that is fair to say. I think 2 hours on the outside. Depends on how many songs and stuff. Last jam I was at was cut short and only had maybe 11 songs in it. That still took about 40 minutes for me to edit up and I did not do any fades or anything.
strumminsix wrote:Also, Dave, are you 100% that the sound quality goes down when you record MP3, edit in WAV, then it puts it back into MP3? I think you are right but want to check.
I am basing that on the way that the compression algorithm works. Basically it takes a sample from the bit stream, identifies bits that, based on probability, can be thrown away without destroying the sound and that is how it achieves reducing the file size. The reverse algorithm for playback will interpolate and reinsert bits as best it can using probablility algorithms to recreate what was removed in the compression. It is an approximation and you are not guaranteed that the resulting bit pattern is the same as the original. The human ear has a difficult time discerning the difference until the compression amount gets too great. So for example an MP3 @ 192 kbits is almost undetectable to my ears versus the original WAV which is at 1440 kbits. I defintely tell a difference at 128 and when you go for more compression than that, say 64, to my ears it is unlistenable... like an old 5th or 6th generation tape. That said, when you load the MP3 into the editor, it decompresses the bit stream by adding in those interpolated bits. Now you cut/copy out the section of the bit stream that represents your song and you go to save it to an MP3, it will apply the compression algorthm again and choose bits to discard to achieve the size reduction. You can't be sure if it would remove the interpolated bits that were added back in or would it choose to remove some of the remaining "originals". This is why I say the sound qualtiy would go down. I guess if it managed to pick all the interpolated bits and removed them again, you would not lose anything over the original compression.
So I can't say 100% but I think there is a good chance you will lose some further quality in that process.
"Nothings for certain, it can always go wrong"
Dave