Before I started using Nero to create audio cd's from mp3 files, I used dbpowerAMP to convert the mp3 files to wave files. The great thing about dbpowerAMP is being able to choose the level of quality used in the encoding conversion. The higher quality files sound better, but are also larger, so sometimes you had to sacrifice a little quality to get the files to fit on a cd. For example, you could get the highest level at 48,000 kHz, 16 bit stereo(187 kb/sec), 44,100 kHz, 16 bit stereo(173 kb/sec), 32,000 kHz, 16 bit stereo(125 kb/sec), and so forth, on down; also with mono options.

When you create an audio cd in Nero's drop and drag window's, the file is automatically converted from mp3 to wave; and a cda shortcut is created for the Table of Contents. But if you look at the cd in 'Explorer' or 'My Computer', all you see is the cda shortcuts. You cannot tell how many MB's are on the cd, and Nero doesn't tell you when you are making the cd.

More importantly, Nero does not tell you what bitrate (or kHz) it is using when converting the mp3's to wave files. I want to know the kHz rate as I showed from dbpowerAMP that the new wave file has, and I'd like to know the MB size of the files on the cd.

I know that it's faster to let Nero do the converting, but I will do it myself if dbpowerAMP will give me a higher quality.

Any and all answers are appreciated.

Umm, I dont know what you are going for here but let me put in my two cents.

If you have an mp3, chances are it's already running at 44,000khz. Changing it to 48,000khz is not going to help at all. That information was lost long ago.

About the wave files, Nero is probably encoding them to the standard PCM Wav format which is an uncompressed digital audio file. It does not get any better then that (unless you add more channles to it hehe) so I dont know what you mean when you say:

quote:

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to choose the level of quality used in the encoding conversion. The higher quality files sound better

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If you take a 128kb mp3 and convert it to 320kbs, is it going to sound better ? No, the quality is already lost and it's not going to come back. Thats is not always true though, converting mp3 to wav can give you a bit of a difference but not much.


I dont know what I am going at here, but you were probably fooling yourself into thinking the higher bit rate music sounded better. Guess the Audiophile on this fourm will have to give his oponion on the matter :-/

As for the CDA shortcuts on the CD, thats like a standard for most audio CD's. Dont know what you were going for there either....

(in reply to bigguy12)

If you intend writing to an audio CD, using any WAV tyoe other than 44100/16 bit/stereo is probably counterproductive, since it has to get to that point on the CD.

Mono material can probably be output as mono, but will be converted to stereo (just doubled up) on the CD.

The Nero decoder has been criticized - you may like top try an implementation of the Fraunhofer decoder (used in winamp) *** though they now intend to charge for DECODERS *** or an implementation of "Mad" as in WinLAME (winlame.sourceforge.net)

(in reply to bigguy12)