Converting MP3 to a PC Playable Lossless File Format

[Tom Swaman]

What is the best method and file format for preserving a lossy MP3 format to a lossless file format that will play directly on a PC? All suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you,

Tom Swaman

[garym]

Re: Converting MP3 to a PC Playable Lossless File Format

What is the best method and file format for preserving a lossy MP3 format to a lossless file format that will play directly on a PC? All suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you,

Tom Swaman

What are you trying to achieve? A pc will play the MP3 file. And converting it to lossless format doesn't restore the MP3 back to lossless. You'll just have the equivalent of MP3 but in a much larger file.

what player are you using on pc.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Converting MP3 to a PC Playable Lossless File Format

Garym,

The player I would use is whatever comes with Windows 10. My music is all FLAC.

The question arose for a friend who is downloading album tracks from Amazon as MP3. First, are these downloaded files not lossy? Can one easily convert these to lossless so as to preserve the music file content?

Thank you,

Tom Swaman

[mville]

Re: Converting MP3 to a PC Playable Lossless File Format

The question arose for a friend who is downloading album tracks from Amazon as MP3. First, are these downloaded files not lossy?

Yes, the mp3 format is lossy.

Can one easily convert these to lossless so as to preserve the music file content?

You can convert from lossy to lossless, but I don't see why you would want to do this. Also, what do you mean by preserve the music file content?

[garym]

Re: Converting MP3 to a PC Playable Lossless File Format

Garym,

The player I would use is whatever comes with Windows 10. My music is all FLAC.

The question arose for a friend who is downloading album tracks from Amazon as MP3. First, are these downloaded files not lossy? Can one easily convert these to lossless so as to preserve the music file content?n

I think win 10 windows media player (WMP) will now handle flac files. I wouldn't use WMP personally as it can do odd things in the background to your tags and album art. I use foobar2000 as my windows audio player.

by preserve content, if you mean convert the lossy MP3 files back to equivalent to the lossless files that would have been ripped from CD, the answer is no, it can't be done. But the good news is that it is rare that one can detect the difference between a good quality MP3 and FLAC. Test yourself by creating some 256, 192, 160, 128, 96, 64 kbps MP3 files from a lossless flac file. Then use foobar2000 player with abx component to run an ABX listening test to see the threshold where you can detect differences.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Converting MP3 to a PC Playable Lossless File Format

Garym,

Thank you and Happy Holidays. Your reply contains excellent information.

Best regards,

Tom Swaman