Hi Folks,
I installed the M4A (AAC) Files (FFmpeg) to Audacity.
Is there any advantage/disadvantage of exporting my music file as a M4A (AAC) file as compared to exporting it as a Wave file then converting it to an iTunes Lossless (ACC) file, other than steps avoided? Will it sound the same?
Thanks
Bart
Strike one was doing production on an already compressed original work. Almost no matter what you do, the new, edited work isn’t going to sound as good as that. Because of the way Audacity works, you always get two compressions and the sound damage is a combination of those two.
You can Get Out Of Jail by exporting a super high quality compressed file or uncompressed WAV, but the work will take a dive again if you then convert to another compressed format. If you need the work as an MP3 on your Personal Music Player, you may well get a weird-sounding iPod show. That’s what kills you. Nobody wants to put four WAV songs on their iPod and then it fills up.
All compressed formats depend on their success being fed perfect, uncompressed original work. That’s the 64 quality stereo thing. But if you edit that and make a new 64, the file size may stay the same, but actual sound quality will be more like 32, honky, bubbly and unacceptable for stereo.
You may get away with that in Apple Lossless. Export as WAV and try it. I’m suspicious of slippery words like “effectively uncompressed.”
Koz
I installed the M4A (AAC) Files (FFmpeg) to Audacity.
Just to make sure… Your original file was AAC?
Is there any advantage/disadvantage of exporting my music file as a M4A (AAC) file as compared to exporting it as a Wave file then converting it to an iTunes Lossless (ACC) file, other than steps avoided? Will it sound the same?
There was an issue when exporting AAC from Audacity/FFMPEG… IIRC - you couldn’t choose or what bitrate/quality you wanted. I don’t know if that’s been fixed.
Will it sound the same?
Maybe… Some encoders are better than others, but I don’t know how they rank. At high quality settings, most encoders and most lossy formats can often sound identical to the original. So, you don’t have to worry too much about which encoder you are using unless you are trying to get the maximum compression for the smallest file.
If your original files were AAC… AAC was designed minimize the “damage” if you re-compress, it so multiple generations of compression shouldn’t be as bad as multiple generations of MP3 compression. But, you should still try to minimize the number of times you compress.
But, [u]MP3DirectCut[/u] can do some limited editing on MP3 & AAC files without decompressing. It’s also usually faster because you are reading & writing smaller (compressed) files and you save the time involved in de-compression and re-compression.
It is not fixed, though you can choose the M4A bit rate if you export using “Custom FFmpeg Export” instead of “M4A (AAC) Files”.
iTunes lossless is called “ALAC”. You can export to ALAC if you export using “(external program)”. See the example at the bottom of http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/exporting_to_an_external_program.html.
Gale