[X4U] How To Anti-Encode Audio File

[DZ-Jay]

On Apr 24, 2005, at 16:57, Alex wrote:

> My understanding is that Audacity <http://audacity.sourceforge.net/> 
> is not an MP3 editor as such. By "MP3 editor" I mean a tool which 
> edits an MP3 file _without_ decoding it (e.g., MP3 Trimmer). AFAICT, 
> what Audacity does is import (i.e., decode) an MP3 file (using 
> madlib), edit the resulting audio file, and then re-encode it to MP3 
> (if an MP3 encoder is installed). In other words, what all audio 
> editors do.

I believe that in order to edit an MP3 file you *need* to decode it, as 
the MP3 algorithm includes compression.  Since it is a "lossy" 
compression, you will always lose quality in the process, as the mere 
fact of decoding it entails the loss of information.  Sort of like 
editing JPEG files.

	dZ.