Sound quality loss when converting audacity file to wav?

G

grh

Member
When I am recording in audacity press stop, and then export the recording as a 16 bit wav, is there any loss of sound quality, from what I recorded in audacity?
 
The single track will already have WAV. Exporting several tracks and processing as a stereo WAV shouldn't be any worse than most DAW. Without making any adjustments in Audacity, you can check the file size of that single track export vs the recorded WAV.. Assuming everything is 16-bit, right : )
 
The only change will be whatever you do to it.

If you do not process it (eq, compression, etc...) it should be the same as what you recorded.

If you are recording in 24 bit and mixing out at 16 bit, it could be argued that there is a loss of quality, but you shouldn't hear the difference. It is also a loss that is unavoidable if you want to create an audio cd, so there isn't much point in worrying about it.
 
Provided what you do is exactly what you described, and your converters are set to record a 16 bit file, no. The output should be exactly what came out of the converter.

If you do any kind of processing before exporting the file, even just changes in volume, the quality will be subject to variables.

Conversions in sample rate and bit depth can cause loss of quality. Here is a link to the manual:

Quality Preferences - Audacity Development Manual

Selecting 32-bit float, the best quality sample rate converter settings and triangle dither should give the best results.

Depending on the type of recording you're doing, it might be better to use a more full featured DAW other than Audacity.
 
I thought most would say the quality should be the same, but I will look more into the things people mentioned. I would listen to the exported wav in my windows media player, and I thought it sounded not as loud, or good, but it could be in my mind lol.
 
grh said:
I thought most would say the quality should be the same, but I will look more into the things people mentioned. I would listen to the exported wav in my windows media player, and I thought it sounded not as loud, or good, but it could be in my mind lol.
Click to expand...

Try Crystal Wolf Player
 
Windows media player has its own volume control, it also feeds into the windows mixer, which is another volume control. There may be other settings that affect the way things sound in it.

Audacity should be going straight to the soundcard, bypassing all the windows nonsense. That could account for the differences you heard, especially the volume.
 
Farview said:
Windows media player has its own volume control, it also feeds into the windows mixer, which is another volume control. There may be other settings that affect the way things sound in it.

Audacity should be going straight to the soundcard, bypassing all the windows nonsense. That could account for the differences you heard, especially the volume.
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Thanks, that does explain alot. This may sound like a dumb question, but when I burn the wav file to disc, the disc should sound identical to the way the wav file sounded in the windows media player, before it was burned to the disc? No loss in sound quality when burning to disc?
 
We look for a change in quality if we change something. Now, you can investigate the hardware end.

I usually burn in Linux, but I have seen some windows software that looks decent( and I burn in Windows). Yes, according to many Mastering Engineers, quality will change, but you have to decide if its detrimental. CD stability, Buffers and speed, and choice of media.

I write the WAV as data files, and the same with MP3 for my optical players that do mp3.

I'm usually using an external - Lite-ON on cdr & CDrw and dvd+r. Not all that special, but an upgrade for the usual onboard drive
 
If the quality changed when you burned a CD, it wouldn't be a very useful tool. It's digital, so as long as the transfer was successful it will be an exact copy. The same way a word document or a picture file burned to a CD doesn't change. (again, if it did, what would be the use?)

The stuff that garww is talking about has more to do with the player and the media than the process of burning. Digital doesn't work like analog, there is no generation loss when doing straight transfers.
 
The article has a good each-way bet. It says that high speed burning is "inherently less accurate than burning at low speeds", but also notes that "most computer media these days is designed for very high-speed burning, usually over 24x. Such discs may not give reliable results when burned at low speeds."

It was also written in 2004, so I reckon CD burners have improved since then.

Personally, I've never been concerned by writing speeds, because it they have never seemed to make a difference (except to annoy me if they are slow).
 
I don't look to SOS for much, but that was about the only summation left on (crap) google. My link wasn't so much about speed, but what the factors might be

It was, certainly more talked about in the last century. I personally, like John Vestman's take on mastering and gear - plenty to read there. I'd love to know what Sax was using before he retired.

Well, what is common sense ? If your burner is rattling like a C5 on takeoff, how accurate is it going to be ? Anyway, like I said, I'm more apt to be making data disks. And I do a lot of RW media. Regular CDR make it to my CD cases, so all that is in one place
 
Those sorts of errors are a problem if you are burning a replication master. If you are just playing it in your car, it's not a problem at all. Chances are, the vibration of the car will introduce more errors (that get fixed with error correction in the player) than any burn errors that get introduced.
 
Well, if it is there in the wav, but not on the CD, then it a degradation. If we call that a loss of sound quality would be up the burn master : ) Light will pass through the holes in some of my CDs. hahah

Someone said it would be an exact copy. Who was that ?
 
garww said:
Well, if it is there in the wav, but not on the CD, then it a degradation.
Click to expand...

Not if it is fixed by the error correction

garww said:
If we call that a loss of sound quality would be up the burn master : )
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That is not a proper sentence and I can't figure out what you meant to say.

garww said:
Light will pass through the holes in some of my CDs. hahah
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What?

garww said:
Someone said it would be an exact copy. Who was that ?
Click to expand...
I believe it was me. You don't think the bler rate on a data cd is any better than an audio cd, do you? Yet your resume, ransom notes, **** stash, etc... all seem to make it on to the CD and on to another computer without being changed.
 
Error correction may have to do with data, as with files. Or, just getting enough so it will play, as with redbook

"However, Red Book-standard audio CDs work in a different way, have a much lower error-protection capability and rely on the spacing between the bumps and the angle of their edges to retrieve and decode the data properly".
 
Have you ever heard a difference due to read/write errors that weren't so bad that the disc was nearly unplayable?

Does the audio quality suffer, or does the playback suffer? The audio doesn't get muddy or lose low end, it doesn't get compressed, etc... The audio is the same. The playback suffers.
 
snow lizard said:
Selecting 32-bit float, the best quality sample rate converter settings and triangle dither should give the best results.
Click to expand...

Depends on how far you are.
If the end export then dithering is complementing.

But if you still need to work on that export i would not dither while dithering adjusts/alters the export in relation to the original.
If you do dither, work on it, export with dither again, work on it, export w/ ... and so on and on, you will eventually ruin your original.
So only dither on the end-result-export.
 
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