Audacity question

[hpharley90]

I opened a 4,198 KB (4.09MB) MP3 song in Audacity then exported WAV.

It did what it was supposed to but made the WAV file 46,351 KB. 45 MB ?

Why did the file get so big on conversion?

I also tried it with three other songs and all the same thing.

This is the first time I tried this.
Before this I was using PE2.0 to convert MP3 to WAV.

It seems like I might be doing something wrong.
Thanks
Rich

[Steve Grisetti]

Well, there's a reason MP3s are the preferred format for music downloads, Richard. As you can see, they're a fraction of the size of WAV files!

A typical 3 minute song is about 3 KB as an MP3. That same song would convert to a WAV file about 10 times that size.

So your results seem a bit typical -- although that's an unusually large MP3! How long is it?

[Ron]

A typical 3 minute song is about 3 KB as an MP3.

I believe Steve meant 3 MB.

[Bob]

Why did the file get so big on conversion?

MP3 files are compressed -- a 10:1 compression ratio is typical but that can vary with the specific encoder used. WAV files are not compressed.

[Steve Grisetti]

Yes, thanks, Ron.

[hpharley90]

How long is it?

4:29 Steve.

MP3 files are compressed -- a 10:1 compression ratio is typical

Wow I never realized that there was that much compression on MP3.
Thanks guys. It makes sense to me now.

[Bill Hunt]

One thing to remember, if the music has been compressed into MP3, some of the original data has been disgarded. When you remove the "compression," you do not reclaim that lost data - you just put the file into a format that can be easily edited. The bass will still be deminished and the treble will still sound "tinny" on a good system. Yes, the file will get larger - much larger, but all one has accomplished is to change the format, so that some programs can better handle the file.

Remember, you have only decompressed the compressed version of the music, you have not reverted to the original.

Now, I do this conversion for almost all MP3's to make it easier for Audition, Premiere Pro or Premiere Elements to handle it - the program does not have to do the decompression, as I've already done that. I've yet to have a problem with this method, except for not having the original, as stated above. I feel the same way about Audio, as I do about Video, when used in my NLE - I want to feed it exactly what it works best with, so I convert outside of the NLE/Audio Editor. I find that proper preperation of all Assets before Import makes editing a lot smoother.

Many folk just use the straight MP3's and have no problems. Some, will have a majority of MP3's that work fine, and then a few that will not work in their NLE or audio editor, without conversion to WAV. I do not know what is different about the offending MP3's. Maybe Ron, or Bob can explain how they might be different and how those differences could affect their functioning in an NLE.

About the only time I use a pure, unconverted MP3 is for short SFX. Everything else gets converted to PCM/WAV 48KHz 16-bit BEFORE I Import it. To date, I've never had a WAV fail in any of my programs, and have never had one of the MP3 SFX files fail either. (Actually, I never had any MP3 fail inside the NLE, but many do, and often with a rate of about 1 out of 20.)

Hunt