Saving in Audition

[Doug30455229846m]

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

[EuanWilliamson]

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%2....

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

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.

[Doug30455229846m]

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_]

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

[Doug30455229846m]

You must be new to Audition. I use Audition 3.0 in my home studio and have ALWAYS been able to set my default saving preference...going all the way back to Cool Edit 25 years ago.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Your assumptions are amusing, but also wrong...

If you open an MP3 in audition it will convert it to a wav file. If you hit Save it will assume that you want to save it as an MP3 file and will do so, but only with a warning first (which you won't see if you've cancelled alerts). But if the file you start with originated as a wav file, then the default save will be a wav. If you use Save As, then it remembers what alternative format you saved with last, and offers this. The only option that's been dropped since Audition 3 is Save Copy As.

[Doug30455229846m]

I'm not talking about opening an existing mp3...If you open Audioion CC, record into it with a microphone, and then save the file, it ALWAYS wants to save it as a .wav. YOU'RE ASSUMPTIONS ARE AMUSING!!!! YOU'RE WRONG!!! and pompous! I read all the other blogs pertaining to this issue and you're self-righteous replys. I'd be willing to bet that you're an engineer and not a creative talent.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

I'm putting a stop to this, as you appear to be incapable of moderating your language.