WAV vs. MP3

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 15 Apr 2009 11:27 am

I recorded some tracks (WAV)with the Zoom H2 standing in front of the amp (BIAB and PSG thru amp) and the sound was unbelieveable. I switched to MP3, same set up and the recording had a slight "under water" sound? Guess I'll switch it back and see if it gets the good sound back. I have bought a new SD card, 4 GB,,,how much WAV recording time will that give me? MP3 time?

Ulf Edlund · Post by **Ulf Edlund** » 15 Apr 2009 1:24 pm

A stereo wav file is somewhere roughly about 9MB per minute. Half of that for mono.
MP3 depends on the bitrate. 160 kb/second or better should sound almost as good as wav and give you five to ten times as long recording time as wav.
Compare it to a CD. 700MB gives you 80 min stereo music. 4 gigs equals 5,71 CD's. 5,71x80 minutes would give you 457 minutes of stereo recording on your memory card. Divided by 60 (minutes) that's 7,6 hrs stereo WAV.
... if i'm right.

Sonny Jenkins · Post by **Sonny Jenkins** » 15 Apr 2009 2:26 pm

Hey Ulf,,thanks a million,,,that's some pretty darn fair "ciphering" there,,,,

Ulf Edlund · Post by **Ulf Edlund** » 15 Apr 2009 10:32 pm

You're welcome Sonny.
I got a real nice scientific feeling there for a minute

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 16 Apr 2009 2:04 am

Sonny, it would be wise to select an MP3 setting anywhere from 128 and above for music. Below 128 is generally considered " internet file sharing " size.

experiment, you will find the settings that work best for you.

t

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 16 Apr 2009 2:13 am

A "wav" file is full fidelity, an MP3 is something less than full fidelity. A higher MP3 bitrate will more provide better fidelity.

An MP3 file is a compressed file and the reason for the degredation of the signal. The higher the bitrate the less compression and the reason it sounds better.

However, if you have an MP3 and convert it to a wav it will not regain full fidelity - it will be basically the same fidelity as the wav file. SoundBlaster has some new software with some of the new Xfi model sound cards that they claim will make MP3's closely sound like a wav. I haven't heard or seen any reports on this.

George Kimery · Post by **George Kimery** » 16 Apr 2009 9:09 am

I am a new owner of the Zoom H2. I recorded our band on it the first time in MP 3 128 bps. I then hooked it up to my stand alone CD Player/Dujplicator. No problem burning a CD. It came with a 512 MB card, so I didn't have the space to record in Wav. The 2nd time I used it, I recorded in Wav 16 bit. When I burned a CD from the Wav file, I had skips on the CD. I then converted the Wav to MP 3 on the Zoom and tried again. Same problem, got quite a few skips, just short bursts of a second or so of silence. I have an 8 GB card, so I am going to try tomorrow night to record the band in MP3 256 bps and see if I can burn a CD without getting skips in it. Is this a problem that anyone else has experienced? The only thing different between the first recording in MP 3 and the 2nd and 3rd ones, is that the first was in MP3 and the next two were in Wav. It logically seems that the recorder just doesn't like the output of the Zoom when it is in Wav or in Wav that has been converted to MP 3 on the Zoom. I sure hope I am right and that I can get a recording tomorrow night that I can make a CD without the skips.

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 16 Apr 2009 9:31 am

George, did you transfer the WAV file to your computer's hard disk before recording the CD? Sometimes a USB port can't keep up with the bandwidth of uncompressed audio in real time. That can cause skipping.

Once I traced an audio skipping problem to a 4-port USB hub box. When I bypassed the hub box and went directly into the computer's USB port, the skipping disappeared.

I always transfer files to my hard disk before burning them to CD. That solves the USB bandwidth problem.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 17 Apr 2009 1:07 am

Excellent point by Bob, don't burn direct from the gadget over USB, transfer all files to a folder on the PC , burn from that folder.

t

Gwyneth Morgan · Post by **Gwyneth Morgan** » 26 Apr 2009 3:54 pm

Was scanning topics and saw this and wanted to add a quick note:

While MP3 is "lossy" as the trade-off for being more space efficient, you can actually get pretty good results using LAME encoding. It's variable-rate MP3 and does a very good job at producing reasonable-size files that actually sound decent. Do your original recordings as WAV, then use a LAME encoder to squish them.