1:1 input to output conversion ???

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
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I have had Audacity for many years and familiar with it. I mostly edit some songs that are MP3 and now moving to FLAC. So I ran across this article and on the Cons part dont’ quite understand this part. Any help would be nice. What I am doing is editing MP3s to FLACs or just editing FLAC if there in that format already and either making them shorter or maybe louder, doing some light editing on some of them. Do I loose any quality as long as they are kept in FLAC and what Sound Quality should they be ??? All of my MP3s are 320. Any advice on having music as FLAC would be nice too. I already know that car applications on USB don’t recognize them and they are larger files, that is ok. Here is the statement and article for full context. Thanks.

My goal is getting all my music to FLAC formats for better quality.

Cons: You will need to download additional programs to access the full features like output format and editing tools. It uses audio record technology, but not 1:1 input to output conversion without any loss in quality.


https://www.any-video-converter.com/best-amazon-music-downloaders.php

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That’s an “advertisement” rather than an objective / informative article. They are advertising their “Amazon Music Downloader” software.
As such, they need to say something “bad” about other products.

Don’t bother converting your files from MP3 to FLAC. Doing so will make bigger files, but no improvement to the sound quality. Converting the format does not magically restore quality losses from previous encoding.

Audacity has built in support for WAV, AIFF, FLAC, OGG, MP3 and some lesser known formats. Support for additional formats can be added by installing “FFmpeg”, but that’s only required if you need to use formats that are not supported natively by Audacity.

No idea what they are trying to say. Audacity is an audio recorder, so of course it uses “recording technology”.


I assume that they are referring to “dither”, which you can read about here: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/dither.html

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What I am doing is editing MP3s to FLACs or just editing FLAC if there in that format already and either making them shorter or maybe louder, doing some light editing on some of them.

FLAC is lossless, period. The various settings can make the compression algorithm “work harder” and take more time to get a smaller file.

Except, I believe FLAC “only” goes-up to 24-bits so there will be some mathematical/data loss if you have a 32-bit original, and if you have a floating-point original that goes over 0dB, the FLAC will be clipped at 0dB.

All of my MP3s are 320.

When you open an MP3 (or other compressed file) in Audacity (or any “normal” audio editor) it gets decompressed. If you then re-export as MP3 you are going-through another generation of lossy compression and some “damage” DOES accumulate. If you export to a lossless format there is no further loss/damage.

There are special-purpose programs such as [u]MP3directCut[/u] that can do some limited editing without decompressing.

Any advice on having music as FLAC would be nice too.

A lot of people keep a FLAC master archive, and then they can optionally convert to other lossy or lossless formats at any time, now or in the future. Metadata tagging is better-supported on FLAC (or ALAC for the Apple guys) compared to WAV and the files are almost half the size of the original WAV. But not everything can play FLAC or ALAC.

I already know that car applications on USB don’t recognize them

That’s true. But, a good-quality MP3 is usually transparent (sounds identical to the uncompressed original in a proper, blind, level matched, [u]ABX Listening Test[/u]). And in a car (especially in a moving car) you are even less likely to hear a difference. …Every time I’ve thought I heard a compression artifact from the MP3s I’ve ripped from CD, the CD has turned-out to have the same “defect”.

It doesn’t always have to be 320kbps to be transparent, and if you do have audible compression artifacts they don’t always go away with a higher bitrate. But, you do have to watch those multiple generations of compression. (AAC/M4A is much more immune to accumulated damage from multiple compressions, but I don’t know that applies when transcoding from MP3 to AAC.)