Conversion for wav files?

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i'm relatively new to this and i need some advice. i recently got a new mac and have been downloading some dave matthews shows onto my computer. i use azureus to do this. these are in flac format when i download. i then convert them to wav files. they sound great but take up a ton of space on my computer and also on my ipod (i have a 30 gig). i'm quickly taking up all that space. i need to know how to convert further down so i'm not taking up as much space. i was thinking that i would burn the wav files onto cd-r's and then convert and then delete the wav files from my mac. i do not want to convert to mp3 because i've read that you lose sound quality. also, these shows that i have are seamless and i know if i convert to mp3 there will be gaps between songs. can i convert wav to aac or something else that is comparable? please help
 
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Anytime you compress a file, regardless of format, be it mp3 or aac or anything else, you lose sound quality. It’s a trade off: how much quality do you want to retain versus how small do you want the file to be. Converting it to 320 kbps mp3 with a good encoder is the best mp3 sound quality – most people cannot hear the difference between that and a .wav file, and the file is much smaller than a .wav would be.
 
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Anytime you compress a file, regardless of format, be it mp3 or aac or anything else, you lose sound quality – most people cannot hear the difference between that and a .wav file, and the file is much smaller than a .wav would be.

You're absolutely right on both counts. But .aiff is not compressed - right? It's what Toast uses when burning audio to a CD for playing on a CD player. Here's a test run:
1. Sound file (crowd laugh) .wav, 312 Kb
3. Same sound file .aiff, 312 Kb
4. Same sound file .mp3, 116 Kb
2. Same sound file .aac, 96 Kb

The quality of the sound was not much different in any of the replays, except that the top two formats had a great deal more audible hiss (I used Mac audio out to amplifier to quality speakers).
 

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AIFF is not compressed. It's very much like Wave. Another format to try that claims to have no quality loss at all is Apple Lossless. It's smaller than Wave or Aiff but a lot larger than MP3. In the tests I have done I hear no difference at all with Apple Lossless which is what they claim. You can also try AAC but using a higher bit rate till you do not hear any difference.

I just did a test with the same song. AIFF it's 43.4 MB, Apple Lossless it's 26.2 MB and MP3 4.5 MB. I hear no difference at all with Apple Lossless but the 128k MP3 has less extreme high end and more noise.
 
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Yeah, aiff is not compressed, but he was talking about converting to a format that takes up less space, so I was talking about compressed formats. Doesn't seem like there is any reason to convert a .wav file to an aiff file in this case because the only thing he/she is worried about is taking up too much space.
 

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Yeah, aiff is not compressed, but he was talking about converting to a format that takes up less space, so I was talking about compressed formats. Doesn't seem like there is any reason to convert a .wav file to an aiff file in this case because the only thing he/she is worried about is taking up too much space.


Oh I totally agree. Was just answering that one question about AIFF then adding the part about Apple Lossless.
 
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yep, I hear ya :)
 
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:D
Anytime you compress a file, regardless of format, be it mp3 or aac or anything else, you lose sound quality. It’s a trade off: how much quality do you want to retain versus how small do you want the file to be. Converting it to 320 kbps mp3 with a good encoder is the best mp3 sound quality – most people cannot hear the difference between that and a .wav file, and the file is much smaller than a .wav would be.

brandon, you may be right .. i tried this experiment with a single song with different settings .... the 320 kbps mp3 or the AAC 320 kbps sounds ... cant make out the difference .. i was using my sennheiser CX 300 II head phones & the BOSE ( both in ear ) [ attached a screen shot of the different sizes & settings ..]

Screen shot 2009-10-27 at 4.37.50 PM.png
 

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