How to change the defauft wav to mp3 while or before working

[Ishizu5FCD]

Hi everyone!!! I'll explain because I know the subject may seem weird. I'm using Audition 2020. I'm sichronizing audio with video and every clip audition creates for every silence etc you add, is created in.wav format, which by the time you finish your proyect can take up a lot of your hardrive space. On  my last proyect I consumed more than 250 GB of disc space in a two hour video and and had to free up space to be able to finish. As a result I'm wondering: Is there a way to change that default wav format for newly generated clips to mp3 for example?  (I know you can do that by exporting but that would be for the final version and that's not what I want) I hope you can clear my doubt. Thanks in advance. 

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

No, I'm afraid you can't. Wav is Audition's native working format, and that cannot be altered.

[Ishizu5FCD]

Thanks for answering!!! If actually it cannot be changed please add that feature in future updates because every user should be able to choose which fornat they what to work with on their proyect, even if it is a lossy one should be up to them if they want to sacrifice quality to save up on disc space while working. Besides, please add mkv compatibility, because nowadays, it's a widely used format and it'd be quite a time saver to be able to have the conversion step spared.   By the way, can I edit this thread to add the "add feature" tag? If so, how?

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

I don't think you understand. It's not possible to use a compressed distribution format as a working format in audio production software. Every time you change something, or indeed alter anything, the material has to be re-encoded, and this is a lossy process - soon you'd end up with nothing. Not only that, but the number of things you can actually do to a raw MP3 file is extremely limited - volume changes is about it. It's completely inflexible, as well as not sounding good.

So no, it will not be added as a 'feature' - ever. If you want support for mkv, then try contacting libsndfile. Meanwhile, save up for some bigger hard drives if you're going to do video - you should be looking at terrabyte-size drives, not gigabyte ones. And ideally come up with a sensible storage philosophy for how you are going to archive stuff - that way you don't need to keep so much stuff on drives anyway. RAID systems can be useful here, and also Bluray.

[Ishizu5FCD]

Ty for your anwer and for the explanation. How can I contact that user? it does not appear as selectable during the search at the sender's field.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Libsndfile isn't a user - look it up in Google.