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Decompressing Mp3's?

M

marc40a

Mar 20, 2002
934
163
Boston MA
#1
Hi guys,

I have a tech question for you.

If I open an mp3 in a sound editing program then save it as a wav., does this 'decompress' the file? Does it increase the bit rate and depth? It definitely changes the size of the file.Am I just putting a magnifying glass on audio that has already been compromised by being made into an mp3? Or am I restoring it?

Forgive my ignorance on the subject.
 
#2
Once sound has been compressed into an mp3, there's no way to restore the original qualiity. You can convert it back to a wav file, but the quality loss can never be reversed. mp3 is a "lossy" audio format.

There are audio compression codecs that are lossless, like FLAC, Monkey's Audio, and such. These formats throw away no audio information, and can be restored to a wav file that is bit-identical to the original source, but the file sizes are much larger than your usual mp3 sizes.
 

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