Are MP3's obsolete?

[wasclywabbit]

I hearing more and more about MP3's being outdated because they are "lossy." But it seems they're still widely in use, including GR. Is there a better format to convert vinyl to that can be used to create an audio CD?

[Chris75]

When you create an audio CD, it does not matter if you are converting the vinyl to mp3, wav or flac.  When you create the audio CD, the burning program you use will automatically convert the audio files to CD format.  Now, to change the format that Golden Records uses to record you may go to Options > Audio settings > Post recording action and select the format you want to use.   Currently, you can select either Mp3 or Wave.

[4mc]

5 hours ago, Chris75 said:

When you create an audio CD, it does not matter if you are converting the vinyl to mp3, wav or flac.  When you create the audio CD, the burning program you use will automatically convert the audio files to CD format.  Now, to change the format that Golden Records uses to record you may go to Options > Audio settings > Post recording action and select the format you want to use.   Currently, you can select either Mp3 or Wave.

We've long had a saying in computers, garbage in garbage out. If you take a lossy file format like Mp3 compressed to say vbr 200kbps then thats what you'll get if you burn it to cd. It doesn't magically create a lossless copy on the cd. 

I run the. Ctproduced.com website and have digitized more than 2,500 vinyl albums, you can even buy some of them through Amazon.com as official label downloads. 

When you copy vinyl albums to files, use the very best format you can if you plan to move them to another format later, like cd. 

Flac or ogg are best but choose carefully.. Wav is also good but creates huge files. 

For myself, after recording an album the first thing I do is export to flac. Finally for my own use, once I've finished cleaning up the recording and seperating the tracks etc. I save them as vbr mp3 files. 

I have a Logitech Transporter SE Network Music Player, attached to a Denon amp with a set of Klipsch speakers, I defy anyone to tell the difference between mp3/ogg/flac

However it really depends how you record, how you export and how you post process the recording. If you max out the volume and use compression to get max volume, that's exactly when the mp3 file format will fail you.