Ok so the short version I have a video I recorded at a concert I have already ripped the audio from the video to wav. I am using audacity to separate the tracks, but when I go and export to wav signed 16 it exports fine but when I test the audio files they are no longer lossless.
Anyone have any ideas I import wav lossless I export wav but now shows up as mpeg.
If you export from Audacity as 16-bit WAV, then Audacity produces a 16-bit WAV file.
How are you testing the audio files?
Three ways first was Traders Little Helper received mixed results either source could not be verified or looks like mpeg 95% second I used audacity to look at the spectrogram and it cut off around 15-16khz third a program called spek also cut about 15-16khz
That could be accounted for by whatever video encoding was used.
“MediaInfo” can tell you exactly what the format is.
MediaInfo is available here: https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download/Windows
I would recommend getting the version without the installer as the Universal installer may include unwanted “bundle-ware” (it did last time I looked).
Three ways first was Traders Little Helper received mixed results either source could not be verified or looks like mpeg 95% second I used audacity to look at the spectrogram and it cut off around 15-16khz third a program called spek also cut about 15-16khz.
Was the original lossless, and did you “test” it?
If there was “loss”, I’m pretty sure it happened before you exported to WAV. For example, if you de-compress an MP3 and save it as WAV you don’t recover any lost information.
Most audio/video formats use lossy audio except for some DVDs & Blu-Rays. And, some of the best sounding music (to my ears) is on concert DVDs with 5.1 Dolby or DTS (both lossy formats). Some DVDs have 2-channel LPCM (lossless) and Dolby 5.1 and I’ll choose the surround sound every time!
I have a video I recorded at a concert
It’s unlikely that your video recorder records lossless audio. And, the weak link in that situation is usually the microphones, microphone placement, and room acoustics.
I used audacity to look at the spectrogram and it cut off around 15-16khz
I don’t recommend “unnecessary” lossy compression, but it turns-out that although you may be able to hear above 15 or 16kHz in a hearing test, you can’t hear the highest audio frequencies in the context of music where the high frequencies are not very loud and they are drowned-out by the other sounds. With good-quality lossy compression you won’t hear any difference between the lossy file and the lossless original. And if you do hear compression artifacts, it’s usually not the loss of high frequencies that you notice… That’s just the easiest thing to see on a spectrogram. Listen with your ears, not your eyes… 
I’ll check out media info and yes they were lossless before going into audacity I did test before and after. but I think I think I figured it out used a different program to rip still showed lossless before and does after.
Ok I had 7 separate VOB files I used audacity to combine them into one long wav file after doing so they came out perfectly lossless according to all my tests, now I took that one file into audacity and since it is concert I want to separate it into single tracks so I did the add label at selection and exported multiple to wav signed 16 bit. The file I imported is a 48000hz file and 16bit so I export the exact same. Now the single track is not lossless but the one long one is. I figured out part of the issue and now a new one arose.
Ok I had 7 separate VOB files
And what does MediaInfo say about the VOB files? VOB files can contain one or more LPCM, Dolby (AC3), DTS, and sometimes MPEG-2 audio tracks. LPCM is the only lossless DVD format.
At this point, I don’t trust your lossy/lossless tests. And, you never said anything was wrong with the sound, only that your “tests” showed lossy.
MediaInfo will tell you what the format is (so you can know with certainty if it’s a lossy format or not). Your other software can only tell you that maybe it was lossy at some point. And, none of that tells you anything useful about the sound quality… I can make a great-sounding lossy file and I can make a lousy sounding lossless file.
Or, maybe you are not telling us everything you’re doing.
Regular WAV files are NOT lossy. You may have opened a lossy file in Audacity but if you exported it as WAV Audacity did NOT make it lossy!
It’s likely that your original files were lossy (since Dolby AC3 is the most common DVD format) and it’s possible that your “ripping” program converted them to a lossy format (or to a different lossy format).
Windows can be aggressive about hiding information from you starting with obscuring filename extensions. MyMusic.wav > MyMusic.
A lot of Windows users have no idea that the filename itself can give you a hint of what you have.
Then there’s Windows Media. For a while there, anything you opened in Windows Media was converted into a WMA file…in the background, of course. MyMusic.wav > MyMusic.wma. In Windows-Speak, both look like MyMusic. The icon may change. Do you know the icon for Windows Media?
So unless you have a steel grip on your tools and analyzers, everything you’re doing could be slippery.
Getting Windows to reveal filename extensions would be a good start. I’m not sure that can even be done any more in Win10.
Koz
Also if you had a lossy VOB file in AC3 and converted it to WAV, that means you did not lose any audio data in that conversion. It does not restore the audio lost in the original conversion to AC3.
Gale
http://www.file-extensions.org/article/show-and-hide-file-extensions-in-windows-10
They did leave it in!
Cool.
Koz