Question on Music & Play:

Do you lose bass when encoding a WAV file into an MP3? I've noticed a significant difference when playing my tracks using my digital distributors' audio player. However, I didn't notice any difference when listening to the tracks on my own computer. Does the compression cause a reduction in the low end (bass)? Is it possible that some details were lost in the uploading process? Or could it be just their player?

Submitted by Brandon Vanno, via email

Answer:

There are too many factors involved in your experience. You may need to cut down the variables to find out why you are hearing a lower-quality sound.

When encoding a WAV file into an MP3, you do lose some audio information. The compression cuts out what is deemed as information that most people cannot discern even when missing.

In your case, you are listening to the MP3 files off two mediums, your digital distributors' audio player and your own computer. Given that the MP3 file you listened to is the same, you should not be comparing the audio quality this way. The portable player and computer will decode the file differently, so the loss of quality you hear could be because of that, and not the conversion.

This is what I'm going to suggest. Get a good MP3 player which can play both WAV files and MP3 files or do this on your computer with headphones. Copy both versions of your music into that, and listen to them carefully. If you can tell the difference between the WAV and MP3 files, that will answer your question about the loss of quality in MP3 compression and how you personally perceive it. If you don't trust your digital distributors' audio player to correctly decode the music files, use something you are familiar with, an MP3 player that you know to have good audio quality when playing MP3s.