Archiving and data compression

MiXit-G

MiXit-G

New member
I'm in the process of archiving some big wave files to CD and want to know if compressing them with a zip program to reduce file sizes affect the integrity of the file?

Of course i would need to unzip them again to reuse but that is just reversing what the compression did returning them to original form right?

Any help?
 
You're right - data compression (which is COMPLETELY different from the audio compression algorithms used in MP3 and similar lossy compression audio formats) on audio files will not affect its sound quality.

But you'll also find that WAV don't compress down a whole lot - at least not with things like WinZip....... you'd need to get a s/w with a data compression algorithm geared towards audio files to gain any real space-saving.
 
Monkey's Audio can usually cut the file size in half. They work on 24-bit files too! There is also a winamp plug-in which can decompress on the fly so you can play them back w/o decompressing them. Completely lossless as well. I believe the site is http://www.monkeysaudio.com
Good luck!
 
Get a cheap @ss 80 gig hard drive or similar and just dump em. LOL


Boy, technology has come a long way since my 386 sx-25 / cakewalk (DOS) days.
 
RAR archiving will cut wave files down by 40% (e.g. a 50MB file to a 30MB file). I went this way, as opposed to a pure audio archiver (which would save a bit more space) simply because the RAR format does so many other things well... you can make huge archives with it, and it manages folder relationships so well.

Also, I'm always worried that with an audio compression tool, something newer and better is going to constantly be catching my eye, and I'll have to redo all my archives, or forget what I used to archive something... I'm reasonably sure that RAR will be around for a while.
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
You're right - data compression (which is COMPLETELY different from the audio compression algorithms used in MP3 and similar lossy compression audio formats) on audio files will not affect its sound quality.

But you'll also find that WAV don't compress down a whole lot - at least not with things like WinZip....... you'd need to get a s/w with a data compression algorithm geared towards audio files to gain any real space-saving.
Click to expand...

BB is right, but there is one advantage in zipping the files. It will allow you to perform a automatic CRC check on the files to help ensure that the data hasn't been corrupted on the CD. I suggest doing this to my clients who submit material on a data CD. Nothing worse than clicks and pops due to a bad burn or inferior CD media.
 
Or you can simply leave it uncompressed, as having easy access to the files without requiring proprietary expansion algorithms is a good thing...
 
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