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Alejandrootje
Alejandrootje
Participating Frequently
August 17, 2017
Answered

Adobe Audition CS6 - process opening MP3

  • August 17, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 3100 views

Hello.

I have a 1000 MP3's that I like to process: matching volume and maybe some editing (fade in/out, ...). A few years ago, I read that if you do this on an MP3 and you save the file again, you would have (some) data loss.

To avoid this I could convert them all to WAV, do the necessary things and save them back as MP3. But with 1000 MP's this would be crazy.

My question is thus:

If Adobe Audition CS6 opens an MP3 (or another format) file, is it instantly opened " as a WAV file ", so one can process it (being a wave and not a data file)?

If yes, the data loss problem is avoided, as well as processing 1000 MP3's from MP3 to WAV to MP3 (...).

Thanks for an answer in a short notice.

Friendly greetings.

Oli4

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer ryclark

    Dear Ryclark,

    Good morning.

    I'm a huge fan of Fawlty Towers, A touch of Frost,

    ..., Britisch good stuff. 

    So, the mentioned setting I can set through the menu of effects and choose True peak level (Amplitude, ...) and then set the value? Can you maybe post a screenshot where to find it in Adobe Audition CS6?

    I tested the mentioned Legacy algorythms in the past, and they seemed to me, leaving to much difference in (perceived) loudness levels.

    Thank you for your patience.

    Friendly greetings.

    Oli4


    I had forgotten that you were using Audition Cs6. True Peak setting for the BS1770 algorithm didn't appear until a later version of Audition. So unfortunately other operations of the Match Volume also may not operate in quite the same way as the Match Loudness feature of the later versions of Audition. It might be worth your while downloading the trial version of Audition CC to see if that works differently on your audio files.

    2 replies

    SteveG_AudioMasters_
    Community Expert
    SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
    Community Expert
    August 17, 2017

    alejandrootje  wrote

    A few years ago, I read that if you do this on an MP3 and you save the file again, you would have (some) data loss.

    To avoid this I could convert them all to WAV, do the necessary things and save them back as MP3. But with 1000 MP's this would be crazy.

    The whole point here is that if you do this, you won't avoid that quality loss - that's exactly where the loss comes from; opening the MP3s and decoding them to wavs, altering them (or even not altering them, come to that) and re-encoding the file back to an MP3. Once they are compressed, there is very little at all you can do to them without damaging them - except to play them. MP3 is essentially designed to be a distribution-only format.

    kglad
    Community Expert
    kgladCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 17, 2017

    [moved from Creative Suites to Audition CS5.5, CS6 & CC]

    ryclark
    ryclark
    Participating Frequently
    August 17, 2017

    Yes, Audition's native format is .wav. So any .mp3 file opened within it will be automatically converted to .wav as they are opened. If you have enough hard drive space it might also be a good idea to also save out all the .wav files so that you can come back to them later if you need to do any alterations. So ideally you would do all the necessary editing and topping and tailing with the .wav files and save the edited .wav files. The only convert them as a Batch Process when you are sure that you have them as you want.

      Alejandrootje
      AlejandrootjeAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      August 19, 2017

      Dear Ryclark,

      Could you please answer my questions so I can have the necessary information I'd like to know, because it's the technical issues that I want to understand?!

      1)     Except the fact of some " deleting " of low and high " notes " of the music (these that we as humans don't hear) by converting

              a WAV to MP3 (which i.a. decreases the data of the file), I would expect that, when opening an MP3 as WAV (which is what         Audition does according to your previous answer), and re-encoding with different settings [44100 (higher/lower) Hz sample rate, 320         Kbps bitrate (higher/lower) and 16 bit bit depth (higher/lower)] would make at least " some " (technical) difference (whether you can         hear it or not)?

      2)     I'll rephrase my questions in my previous post: which settings should I use to have the best audio technical vs. data management         effect (the list following is what I'm using 'till today), when converting WAV to MP3?!

              Sample rate          44100 Hz (CD quality)       for audio work

              Bitrate                   320 Kbps (CD quality)       the highest value you can set in Adobe Audition

              Bit depth               16 bit (CD quality)              24 bit would be for DVD quality? 32 bit is used for?

              (joint) stereo         does choosing 5.1 make any difference when re-encoding, for the future use of my MP3's?

                                           when not having - at this time - a 5.1 device for playing, the 5.1 MP3 would be played as stereo, right?

                                           I was thinking if you have no original 5.1 " multitrack " WAV/MP3, re-encoding a (joint) stereo MP3 to 5.1 has no                                      use?

      3)     What did you mean with " Audition works at 32 bit depth natively "? How do I put that in perspective using Audition?

              I mean: when exporting a WAV to MP3, the program let's me choose settings: e.g. lower than 32 bit depth for example.

      4)     I'm familiar with the normalise software but that's not how I want to fix " my problem ".

      Thank you very much for the time you invest(ed) in me.

      Friendly greetings and enjoy your weekend!

      Oli4


      Dear Ryclark,

      I just read that it's important that the song/mix/... doesn't exceed 0 db on the levels (dBFS).

      So I want to use limiting when processing the ITU-R BS.1770-2 Loudness algorithm on my songs. But with e.g. Hard limiter you can specify the value of this setting. What's the value set in this " use limiting " in the match volume effect?

      Thanks again.

      Friendly greetings.

      Oli4

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