hi! i am a new member on the forum and a musician. I have a creative burner on my computer and nero and music match software. I am enjoying burning mp3 tracks to CD which i use for practice (i play saxophone) and to research sequence for albums i record in the studio. I am going to be bringing some tracks to the studio that has pro tools etc.to load in and then overdub my horn. The engineer (who is top pro grammy winning) has told me definetly a quality drop in mp3 format even if i convert it back to audio CD. Music Match boosts higher quality on their mp3pro format. So my question is regarding the quality drop is their away that i can use my existing MP3 files that i ripped from CD and burn them back to CD at CD quality but in mp3 or iso data mode so i can fit more tracks on a CD? This album project and the session i am doing next is not the final session which will be with live musicians and not using tracks but the engineer still would like high quality sound on the tracks were experimenting with.
thanks,
Glenn

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. But as for using MP3Pro format, such as MusicMatch is capable, there is a NOTICABLE difference in MP3Pro and a song recorded say at 192 Bit encoding. I do not think that the MP3Pro format is even CLOSE to the sound of a regularly encoded MP3.

As for your technician. He is correct, just the process of making an MP3 CRUNCHING it down to MP3, it leaves off certain aspects. The best way for you, however inconvenient this may sound, is record your music to waves (no loss in sound) and burn to cdrw. Then you are transporting these songs in full mode (WAV) not crunched down MP3's. This is from a technical standpoint.

(in reply to glenn zottola)

thanks and i apreciate that as the music match software says mp3pro is better quality than mp3 with 50%less space and i didn't see how that could be and i tried a few tracks and it wasn't 50% less. just to clarify my question it was strickly a transportation issue as i love how i can get 100 tracks on a cd with mp3 over wav. but yes i am presently burning wave now about 12 cuts per cd. i just wondered if there was any "compressed" format that doesn't comprise quality. realize i am an accoustic jazz musician and new to anything compressed. does an ipod or juke box hard drive compress because i know they have a lot of memory ?
Glenn
p.s. i hear you talk anout "192 bits" and my engineer was explaining that to me regarding mp3. i see i have settings for that on nero and music match so whats the deal just set it higher and i get better quality and does that effect the stability of the burn as now i burn 4x audio and 8x data with no problem.

(in reply to glenn zottola)

The only compressed formats which do not lose ANY quality, are lossless ones such as Monkey's Audio or FLAC.

Compression ratio is MISERABLE - even 50% would be optimistic (using a digital noise gate, to ensure that silence is absolutely digital silence, can help).

For MP3 compression, it's hard to beat LAME with alt-preset standard or alt-preset extreme
These are variable bitrate (VBR) modes, so the encoding uses as many, or as few bits are required by the momement by moment audio complexity.

A VBR averaging a certain number of Kbit/sec is invariably better than a CBR (constant bit rate) of the same size.
But a lot of software can have trouble with VBR - older versions of Easy Cd Creator would not accept it.

Musepack (MPC) may also be worth a look - in a 3-way battle (LAME MP3, OGG Vorbis, MPC) Musepack seems to score the most wins.

It's usually said that MP3pro is tuned for lower bitrates, where it does score over MP3 by making a better job of hiding what's missing

PS. MP3 bitrates - measured in Kbit/sec
32 - Voice and low-Q music
64 - Mono music, better than AM radio quality
128 - According to some, "near CD" quality, lets call it FM
(Usually "Joint stereo" coded as middle/side)
192 - CD Quality on less demanding source
256 - Often called "CD Quality"
320 - Maximimum

If I remember rightly, alt-preset standard averages close to 192, but beats it in quality (indistinguisable from original by most people)

Alt-preset extreme averages close to 256, with a quality not really bettered by CBR 320, as it has pretty much carte blanche to use 320 on the peaks of complexity, and fall back for less demanding passages.

In the LAME encoder, VBR WORKS! - in many others, VBR didn't work properly, but now the only reason to favour CBR, is if your software can't take VBR

PS. Stereo modes are:
1. Joint Stereo (where it uses correlation between left/right to reduce the data)
2. Full stereo (where it's allowed to carry/borrow bitrate between the two channels)
3. Independent channels

(in reply to glenn zottola)

The bitrate is the amount of data used for one second. The bigger the bitrate, the bigger the file. A wav file ripped from a CD is 1440 kbps.

For MPC and MP3 high quality settings, visit hydrogenaudio.org

FAQ
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=4917

Recommended Lame (MP3) compiles
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=478

Recommended Lame (MP3) settings
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=203

List of recommended MPC settings
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=11&t=1927&

(in reply to glenn zottola)

i would just burn them as regular audio CDs. why mess around with encoding/decoding all the time?

ps. if you are using windows, i suggest using http://www.exactaudiocopy.de to rip the audio CDs.

(in reply to glenn zottola)

http://www.dvdipodripper.com/Lenogodvdvideotoipod/
http://www.dvdipodripper.com/superdvdtoipod/

(in reply to rabbit)