I've been researching freeware audio editing tools to try and find the best one for my application. I have a digital voice recorder that will only generate WMA files. I would like to cut sections out of these recordings and either discard them or save them as separate files. These files will either be left as WMA or possibly converted to MP3. The way I see it, there are a couple of ways to approach this:
1. Convert the WMA files to MP3, and then use an MP3 editor on the resulting files
2. Edit the WMA files directly, and then save them as a WMA or MP3 file
I would prefer to edit the files while minimizing the amount of quality lost due to recompression. It seems the only way to ensure zero quality loss due to recompression would be to use a program that can edit WMA files directly without having to perform a recompression to save the changes. Otherwise I would be looking at 1-2 losses due to compression by using option 1 above - once to convert the WMA file to MP3, and another loss I have to recompress the MP3 file to save the changes. Option 2 would only result in a loss due to recompression if the program was incapable of saving changes to a WMA file without recompressing it, or if I wanted to save the WMA file as an MP3 file.
I've considered the fact that the audio I am working with consists only of spoken voices and background noises. I would think that the quality of these recordings wouldn't suffer much due to recompression as a result. Is that correct? I'm also aware of the fact that some freeware editors such as Audacity are incapable of saving changes to an MP3 or WMA file without performing a recompression. Having said that, I have another couple of questions:
1. What is the bitrate equivalence between MP3 and WMA?
2. If I edit a WMA/MP3 file in Audacity and save it as the same type of file with the same bitrate, will the loss of quality due to recompression be negligible?
The only program I've tried so far is Audacity. Given the above information, is that the best program for my application, or are there other ones that would be better suited for what I'm trying to do?
1. Convert the WMA files to MP3, and then use an MP3 editor on the resulting files
2. Edit the WMA files directly, and then save them as a WMA or MP3 file
I would prefer to edit the files while minimizing the amount of quality lost due to recompression. It seems the only way to ensure zero quality loss due to recompression would be to use a program that can edit WMA files directly without having to perform a recompression to save the changes. Otherwise I would be looking at 1-2 losses due to compression by using option 1 above - once to convert the WMA file to MP3, and another loss I have to recompress the MP3 file to save the changes. Option 2 would only result in a loss due to recompression if the program was incapable of saving changes to a WMA file without recompressing it, or if I wanted to save the WMA file as an MP3 file.
I've considered the fact that the audio I am working with consists only of spoken voices and background noises. I would think that the quality of these recordings wouldn't suffer much due to recompression as a result. Is that correct? I'm also aware of the fact that some freeware editors such as Audacity are incapable of saving changes to an MP3 or WMA file without performing a recompression. Having said that, I have another couple of questions:
1. What is the bitrate equivalence between MP3 and WMA?
2. If I edit a WMA/MP3 file in Audacity and save it as the same type of file with the same bitrate, will the loss of quality due to recompression be negligible?
The only program I've tried so far is Audacity. Given the above information, is that the best program for my application, or are there other ones that would be better suited for what I'm trying to do?
