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Having never used compression before, does it make any difference if you compress a WAV file then export as an MP3, rather than compressing an MP3 and exporting as an MP3? Is one way 'better' than the other? (Using Audacity to compress BTW).

peter200
Having never used compression before, does it make any difference if you compress a WAV file then export as an MP3, rather than compressing an MP3 and exporting as an MP3? Is one way 'better' than the other? (Using Audacity to compress BTW).

Hello,
well, the first thing Audacity or any other program will do with an MP3 you 'import' is converting it to wav. So you don't really apply a compressor to the mp3 but to its editable equivalent , i.e. a wav file which will be re-encoded when you 'export' it.

So answering to your question, and if a I understood well, you should apply *any* editions/ transformations to the original wav file. One should convert to mp3 only when no additional modifications are needed, as any import/export action implies decoding/encoding and reduces quality. Just like if you convert an jpg image file into a bitmap, and then again encode to jpg, etcetera. Hope this helps.

Saludos

Thanks for the help. Makes perfect sense.