J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Bill in Co
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
(If so, with what software?)
[]
No, you can't. Because they are different formats. So there would be
a slight loss in converting it to mp3.

Yes, Paul's explained that.

BTW, m4a is the same as aac, so you
might try renaming the m4a to aac, and see if your converter recognizes
it.

I've just tried. Unfortunately, neither my old Goldwave nor my old
WinAmp did, so I doubt my standalone player would. I just tried with
another .aac file I have, and old GoldWave still didn't like it, but old
WinAmp did, so there are obviously more than one kind of .aac file.

It may have something to do with the licensing, OR you didn't install a
converter pack for Goldwave, if that option exists. With aac we're getting
into Apple territory here, and Apple likes to lock things down, as I recall.
But there are programs out there. I don't think it's due to the kind of aac
file, it's due to whether or not the converter has been added to the program
or not, and the licensing stuff

There are lots of programs out there that will reconvert these audio
files, but not losslessly, which is impossible.

One of my pet peeves is all the fuss that is made about how terrible it
is when you reconvert an audio file. I wonder if they have ever done it
and actually listened to it, and actually compared the differences. I
have, and

I agree. It's the same as image files and the JPEG format; yes, I know
it loses on every save (unless you use JPEG lossless cropping or
rotation), but for _practical_ purposes, the loss is rarely visible, let
alone significant, at least at high enough resolutions. (I do genealogy,
and a large proportion of online images are only available in JPEG. I
often tweak and re-save - for example, highlighting a section - without
visible loss; I guess you could find the degradation if you looked for
it, but I think you'd have to look hard.)

Yes, I was going to bring up the analogy with JPEGs, but you've already done
it. The purists out there would insist on never using a JPEG for anything.
:-) The analogy would be to only use WAV files for everything, with FLAC
being perhaps a close second. I can't imagine living with that limitation,
in terms of disk space, etc. However, if I were an audio engineer working
in the studio, that would of course be different. Since I use a portable
tiny mp3 player, disk space is still important to me. Come to think of it,
even on the HD too, as I have tons of audio files collected and stored there
over all the years, and there wouldn't be enough space for WAV files.

Especially (for audio files) with (a) older humans (b) the sort of
speakers that are common these days, especially in e. g. laptops. I
generally don't trim if I can see there is content there even if I can't
hear it myself, or I could make even smaller files - because disc space
is so cheap nowadays.

the differences are typically inaudible, if you do it right. Just be
sure to keep the bitrate the same, or preferably higher, in the
conversions.

Hmm, bitrate: I'd always (I think) go via WAV, with no compression (i.
e. raw).

When you convert one format to another, I think the intermediary step is WAV
anyways, so I'm not sure you gain anything by selecting WAV (since I believe
that step happens anyways as it's being converted from one format to the
other). However, if you intend to edit the file, then converting to WAV is
obviously the best idea.

But I have even reconverted an mp3 file at a modest bitrate of 128 kbps
to the same thing again, and you'd be hard pressed to hear any
difference. Do

That's where we differ - I rarely use as _high_ a rate as 128kbps for
.mp3! 96kbps is about the highest I use normally. For 22050 Hz (which I
use if there's no content above 11 kHz) I don't think I've used over 48k
for mono, 64k for stereo.

Well, I'm talking about good quality music files here on a decent sound
system,, not just stuff off the radio. For the latter, I agree.

it several times, however, and all bets are off.

Of course, there are always those purists who insist on using FLAC
files, or those who insist that anything that has been digitized sounds
inferior to, say, vinyl records,

Oh, purlease (-:.

And I didn't even get into the so called purists who insist that vacuum tube
amplifiers have much less distortion than any transistor amplifiers (but
which was admitedly true back in the 1960's and early 1970s, as I do
recall).

simply because it was digitized, or even that those
expensive gold plated monster cables are required for the purest sound to
the loudspeakers. :-)

Gold plated _connectors_ have some use _if_ you're replugging often -
but that's mainly to avoid corrosion on the mating faces, not much to do
with any property of the gold itself. As for the cables themselves
between the connectors, I _do_ acknowledge the existence of skin effect
- high frequencies _do_ only travel in the surface layer of conductors -
but (a) this [the depth of the "skin"] _tends_ only to be relevant well
above audio frequencies, (b) unless you're using cables that are bare to
the air, i. e. if you use normal cables with a covering, copper's no
different; it's basically the corrosion problem again.

Yup, only for the corrosion thing. But some think the gold makes better
sound. :-)

So my advice is let go of the mantra about lossless conversions, and
just do it and enjoy the music. But recode it at a minimum of 128
kbps, using Joint Stereo mode. I also prefer to use a fix bitrate, but
there are those who like to use a variable bitrate, which is another
story.
I've nothing against VBR (as long as the converter uses some sort of
look-ahead), but the old LAME encoder I use (and/or the GoldWave I use
it from) doesn't/don't have VBR.

VBR files can (admitely rarely) be problematic for some audio utilities or
some audio programs, which is why I stick with the simple CBR format, which
works flawlessly on everything, without any hidden surprises along the way.
It has happened to me on rare occasion in the past, but I don't recall now
the particulars. I just consider using CBR a form of insurance.

I have a similar philosophy about making backup images for my HD. I
*always* do a complete image backup - no incrementals. I just don't trust
it. Everything is contained in only one file - there is only one file to go
wrong, if it goes wrong, and there are no other dependencies. :-)