mp3 processing

WaveLab
1

Hello,

I’ve rendered 12 songs from the montage from wav [88.2k/24 bit] to mp3 [44/16]. I then wish to do some fade in/out’s on the mp3’s in the audio workspace. Whenever I save the files however, the dialog box asks me to encode the mp3’s using whatever encoding I wish. I saw this blurb in the help files that said they are temporary wav files;

Note that when you open an MPEG compressed file in WaveLab, the file is converted to a temporary wave file that is much larger than the original compressed file, so make sure that you have enough free space on your hard disk when opening MPEG compressed files. On saving, the temporary wave file is converted back to MP3, so from a user perspective the file handling is transparent apart from the size difference mentioned above.

However, after I have saved the mp3’s, the file I had just saved with the fade in/fade out’s still shows as being unsaved (* sign to the right of filename). The mp3 encoding dialog box comes up again…So how do I save these
mp3 files with the fade in/out’s?

2

When you do this in version 7.1, there is a text hint about this in the “Save as” dialog. Basically, when you save to mp3 file, you create a copy, and the open file remains untouched, to keep the best quality data. This is by design, let me explain:
Everytime you save to mp3, the quality of the file is reduced (espescially the 1st time, of course). Therefore, you should ideally only save to mp3 once. All the editing should be done before, on the non compressed file.

I understand this is a bit disturbing to see the * staying, but in the same time, this is useful as a reminder.

3

Thanks PG, that cleared that up. There is one scenario in which one may have to do processing after rendering (including dithering). What if the rendering causes dc offset errors that are noticeable because of the rendering process and you do have to remove this at this point? I always check for dc offset prior to rendering.

It’s said that dithering should be done at the very end of the line, so would removing the dc offset after dithering be a problem?

4

so would removing the dc offset after dithering be a problem?

yes