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Participant
October 4, 2023
Question

Saving in Audition

  • October 4, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 422 views

Why does Audition default to saving as a .wav? I save as .mp3 for all my work and it's annoying that I have to select .mp3 every time

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2 replies

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 4, 2023

The other reason is that wav is Audition's working format, so it makes sense to save it that way. To add a bit to what Euan said about repeated editing - if you decide you want to do some more work on a file, and you've saved it only as an MP3, then to rework it you have to decode what you previously encoded - which is where the quality drop comes in. And every time you do it, this gets worse.

Participant
October 4, 2023

You're assuming that the mp3 will be "reworked". The type of work I do requires mp3's that don't need reworking. Why not leave it up to the user as to how he/she wants to default the saving process like it always was in the past?

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 4, 2023

I didn't assume anything, and as far as I'm aware, the saving process has always worked like this.

EuanWilliamson
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 4, 2023

The main reason is that WAV is a lossless format.
MP3 is lossy and so only suitable for final delivery.

So WAV is better for repeated editing.

As Audition can't guess your usage, it's in a sense trying to save the best quality. 
https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/whats-the-difference-between-file-formats.html#:~:text=WAV%20uses%20PCM%20(Pulse%20Code,is%20no%20data%20loss%20whatsoever.

 

Best regards, Euan.