Bad quality after export as MP3

[alliemaradona]

I will preface this by saying that I am extremely new to all of this, so I apologize if it seems like I don't know what I'm talking about. (I don't.) If you need me to provide more information, please let me know. I am using Audacity 2.0.0 (.exe) on a Windows Vista operating system.

I have been having trouble with the audio quality after exporting my files as MP3s. Here is the process I've been using:

- Convert a WMV file to an MP3 in order to separate the audio from the video.
- Open the MP3 in Audacity and do the necessary editing.
- Export the file as an MP3 at 320 kpbs.
- Insert the post-Audacity MP3 into an AVS (video editing program) project, and THIS is where I run into the problem.

The track sounds amazing in Audacity but when I play it back in AVS, the quality is not nearly as good. (I won't go so far as to say it's terrible, but there is a noticeable difference.) This leads me to believe that the problem occurs when I export the files as MP3s.

Should I be exporting my files as a different file type? Or am I doing something else wrong?

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks in advance!

-Allie

[steve]

MP3 and WMV are both "lossy" formats - they discard some of the data so as to make the file size smaller.

• Convert a WMV file to an MP3 in order to separate the audio from the video. Some sound quality loss here due to encoding as MP3
• Open the MP3 in Audacity and do the necessary editing.
• Export the file as an MP3 at 320 kpbs. Some sound quality loss here due to encoding as MP3
• Insert the post-Audacity MP3 into an AVS (video editing program) project, Probably some sound quality loss here due to encoding in the video format

For best quality we need to minimise the use of lossy formats.

We can cut out one of the lossy conversions here:

• Convert a WMV file to a WAV in order to separate the audio from the video.

and another one here:

• Export the file (from Audacity) as 16 bit WAV

[alliemaradona]

Thanks for the prompt reply, Steve! Your suggestions worked like a charm.