I have been studying the Audacity 3.2 Reference Manual on bit rate in reference to voice recording and file export. From this study it appears the best settings are:
Record at 32-bit float
Export as .wav at 32-bit
Furthermore; “Playback” will decay the recording each time it is used.
Is the above correct? I am recording for LibiVox so, the finished file needs to be in .mp3 format. After using CheckIt, I use MP#Gain if necessary. I like to use WavePad for editing. Any comments or suggestions?
Bit rate only applies when you make the MP3. (It’s possible to calculate the bit rate for uncompressed files but that’s not how they are normally specified.)
That’s good. It’s actually more about editing/processing since the actual recording bit depth depends on the capability of your hardware.
32-bit floating-point is fine if you are going to edit in WavePad. It’s “overkill”, but OK, and I assume, like Audacity, WavePad is going to use floating point internally anyway.
Playback doesn’t change the audio.
If you edit an MP3 it gets decompressed when you open it and that doesn’t hurt anything but when re-export it as MP3 you are going through another generation of MP3 compression and some “damage” does accumulate. You should compress once as the last step,