Converting WAV to MP3 creates latency?

[Pedro Teixeira]

I had someone telling me that today, I've never heard of in my life.

A band I'm working with are tracking vocals abroad so I just sent each song in MP3 because not only nothing is mixed, just raw tracked files, but the internet at the studio is super slow.
Apparently the engineer at the studio they're doing that said that converting to mp3 creates a latency that is random and cannot be avoided... thus them needing the actual wav files? Is that even remotely true? I've never heard of that ever

 

[006]

Uh... interesting. First time hearing about that myself. Usually when I track vocals what I do is bounce the stereo mix from the instrument tracking session as a MP3 (no sense using a huge WAV file for this) and then start a new project dedicated to vocals, import that MP3 and track vocals over it. Later I bring the vocals in to the instrument session, which is all WAVs of course, and mix them in from there. Never once had an issue with anything being off. Sounds like the dude is full of shit. Just my humble opinion though.

 

[Nuno Filipe]

We all know about the loss of quality but also latency? Yeah seems like bullshit. Never heard also. That engineer must be tad donley.

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

I think he's the bass player for Mnemic lol. But either way, I'm kind of OCD and I know I've checked for that kind of stuff a long time ago, hence I never even think about it. It makes absolutely no sense, not even from a programming/code point of view. I too believe he's full of shit, or just plain naive/ignorant.

 

[updog]

even if that was true, the latency would be so small that it couldn't possibly affect a performance. the whole idea is absolutely ridiculous.

and even if there was noticeable latency, i still can't see a huge problem there. just nudge the first transient a bit, boom, latency gone.

if you ask me, i think this guy just wants to make himself look real pro or something. but whatever his motives are, he's only wasting time here.

 

[SocialNumb]

You should probably mail him a bag of shit. Just saying.

 

[Skaldir]

Its true though. I also experienced it.
easiest would be to try it yourself
export an mp3 and import it back

 

[Skinny Viking]

Saw something about this once ... something about LAME encoder but I don't remember but honestly I've never experienced it myself when moving between wave and mp3 files

 

[Ascendant]

Yeah what Skaldir said, this shouldn't be hard to test. Export to wav and mp3, open them in a new project on individual tracks and invert the phase. Also compare the waveforms. I myself have never heard of this nor have I experienced it, though I always use OGG (or sometimes flac) instead of mp3 when I need smaller files.

 

[RedDog]

Sounds like they're pulling something, and want to trick you out of the master tracks.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Ehh?!?! I've had mixes from PT exported as MP3 for me, opened them in REAPER, tracked vocals to the MP3, rendered tracked vocals as WAV, sent back to PT, and everything was fine. If it was off at all, it was not noticeable.

 

[Morgan C]

Converting to mp3 (at least with the LAME encoder) does put a little latency at the start. Not sure whether its random or not.

 

[JHA]

I think they are just trying to fool you to send lossless files. At least in Reaper rendering to mp3 with LAME doesn't produce any latency. That is, the imported mp3 and wav are in phase.

Ascendant: of course mp3 won't null with lossless wav since mp3 is lossy compression format...

 

[pikachu69]

I was converting a .wav to mp3 today for another thread about bass strings. I edited the track as a .wav to start instantly then saved the track. I then noticed it had added 23 milliseconds to the front of the track! this was in Sound Forge pro 10. I then re deleted the silence on the mp3 file pressed save and it popped back up again. Weird.

 

[exoslime]

i had similiar issues a few years ago too.. needed to export vsti and some single tracks, and did it as mp3 , and reimportat back to the project and the sync was slightly off, especially at the end of the song.
then i rexported as wav with the same samplerate etc as the project file and all was fine.. i dont know if the original mp3 was wrong, or the reinterpretation of the mp3 file in the daw-software.
it can be a system specific issue, that can happen on some system configuration and on some it will work flawless..
but calling a guy a donkey or full of shit is a little bit inproperiate for someone who just wants proper material to work with.
if internet connection is too slow.. burn it onto a cd and send it via snail-mail

 

[DanLights]

I don't know, I've exported mp3s of rough scratch mixes for vocals,bass, etc. a million times and everything always lined up perfectly when putting everything together in the same session.

 

[Morgan C]

I think they are just trying to fool you to send lossless files. At least in Reaper rendering to mp3 with LAME doesn't produce any latency. That is, the imported mp3 and wav are in phase.

Ascendant: of course mp3 won't null with lossless wav since mp3 is lossy compression format...

I didn't say they didn't null. But converting to mp3 (at least with my settings thru LAME encoder) creates latency at the start. Here's a wav file, and that same wav file converted to mp3 (and back to wav to import into my DAW). I don't know whether or not that initial latency is random or not.

 

[Adrian Warren]

I had this happening once to me too. I came to the conclusion that it's not a very clean and professional way to work with a lossy consumer file format in a professional studio setting.

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

I just tried this on cubase, exporting in wav and mp3, then import it back, exactly spot on

 

[JHA]

I didn't say they didn't null. But converting to mp3 (at least with my settings thru LAME encoder) creates latency at the start. Here's a wav file, and that same wav file converted to mp3 (and back to wav to import into my DAW). I don't know whether or not that initial latency is random or not.

So you convert it with the command prompt version of LAME or? I think that might be some setting you can switch off because many mp3 players "cut" the beginning from the tracks hence the added silence. But if you render straight from the DAW to mp3 and wav then import both they should line up perfectly.

Also tried this with Reaper's Batch file/item converter and there is no delay in the mp3 file. The LAME is version 3.98.3.