Hi Jim,
I understand that you believe I am trying to do conversions you think are bad.
Still, there is something different on my PC that others say work, so I'm asking for help to know why.
Another reason I do conversions... is when I have an mp3 music file and I get a flac version. My process is to convert my existing mp3 files to flac and then make sure the file names match and then I copy the "real" flac files over the converted mp3 files and then have MC update the tags from the library. Maybe there is a better way to do this, and I'm open to ideas, but for years it's worked for me.
Still the issue is not if I'm doing a conversion that is not best, the issue is why MC will let some do those conversions and not allow me to and I was asking for help from JRiver to figure it out.
I believe (could be wrong) that repeated saves of an mp3 file will result is even lower quality as even more bits are removed or altered. I have the same belief with jpg files, each save lowers quality.
So when I want to edit a music file, I convert it to lossless, forever saving the current mp3 quality and then do my edit and keep it as flac (hard drive space is cheap). Today I wanted to edit out 2 minutes of dialog on a live track before the music started. I ended up using another program to do the conversion for me.
This is from the GoldWave sound editor program I use in their forum.
Yes. Editing will degrade an MP3 if you re-save it as MP3 because it's getting compressed again.
If you save-as WAV (or FLAC) there will be no further degradation. (With lossy compression, data is thrown-away during compression, not during decompression and it's going to be decompressed when it's played anyway.)
GoldWave (and all "regular" audio editors) decompress the audio when you open the file. If you re-save the file in a lossy format (such as MP3) you are going through another generation of lossy compression and some "damage" DOES accumulate. You may not hear the quality loss with one decompress/re-compress cycle but it's something to be aware of and you should try to minimize the number of times it's compressed.
Anyway I assume we will disagree and that is okay. I would just appreciate some help in how to correct a problem on my PC where an MC feature does not work for me. Since it works for others, I assume it's my PC, but maybe it's something you can help me fix.
My first purchase was for MediaJukebox 8 way back when... I could sure use some help now.
Thanks for reading.