Audio Transcoding - A Bad Thing?

[indolikaa]

Good Evening!

Indolikaa likes to capture all audio for DVD use as PCM and then conduct the appropriate post-processing, if any is required. Many discs are made with a straight PCM/WAV soundtrack; Indolikaa's ears are in much better shape than his eyes after 31 years!

However, after downloading the trial version of MPEG-VCR for testing, I have discovered that while their software will allow the importation of LPCM audio streams, it will always encode them to either Layer-I or Layer-II once editing is complete. I e-mailed their support team and they answered back (within 1 business day, and for a trial user, I might add) that this 'limitation' will be removed in the future.

If I capture a WAV that is coded to MP2 and then transcoded back into WAV, how much quality will be lost in the process? I am only assuming there is a loss because MPEG itself is a lossy compression scheme and one cannot de-MPEG without having to guess (to a certain degree) what the original WAV file looked like.

Your time and input is appreciated.

.indolikaa.
The Audiophile

[bugster]

.indolikaa.
The Audiophile

If you really are an Audiophile, then it is your ears that are the best judge of this.

On a slightly more technical side, it also depends on the bitrate used when encoding the wav to mp2. Higher bitrate == higher quality (in general, bad encoders can ruin this theory), so if you can, set your software to use the highest bitrate possible for minimum quality loss.

[Cornucopia]

1st-Loss is loss. Once it's gone, you can't get it back. Hopefully, you will be encoding at a high enough bitrate to where the loss won't be noticeable.

2nd-If you know you'll be going back to WAV at some point, why not just keep the original WAV file around. Build up a folder of those that you use and back 'em up to a DVD as Data files, then re-use them when your software supports it.

HTH,
Scott

[indolikaa]

If you really are an Audiophile, then it is your ears that are the best judge of this.

Hardly. I reserve the area underneath my name for smart-ass comments related to the posting in question.

@ bugster/Cornucopia

Both replies are duly noted. Thank you.

[bugster]

If you really are an Audiophile, then it is your ears that are the best judge of this.

Hardly. I reserve the area underneath my name for smart-ass comments related to the posting in question.

Just the area underneath your name

[indolikaa]

indolikaa wrote:
bugster wrote:
If you really are an Audiophile, then it is your ears that are the best judge of this.


Hardly. I reserve the area underneath my name for smart-ass comments related to the posting in question.




Just the area underneath your name

Are you suggesting that Indolikaa would fill a thread posting with rhetorical nonsense and smart-ass comments?

Oh, wait. That describes about 90% of my posts, doesn't it?

.indolikaa.
Relax, Laughing is OK