The problem with compression, is that you always lose SOMETHING. Normally with mp3 you arent supposed to have losses in the normal audio range of humans, but when you try and edit something in mp3 format, this is when things really start to show



When you open an mp3 for edit. usually the file is exploded back to .wav for editing and then recompressed to mp3 afterwards. This starts to lead to subtle changes in the audio, and if you do it enough, it'll end up sounding like you recorded it off the radio.



Keep it in a minimally compressed format like .wav of .aiff or raw pcm data if thats what your application uses. Once you convert to mp3, give that file out to people, but dont do anymore work on that specific file.



File compression such as .zip and whatnot will compress a sound file (not as well as converting to mp3 though), but will let the original file come out the way it was first saved.



If you can manage the disk space required to juggle a whole bunch of tracks, burn them to cd, or dat or some other offline format while keeping it in its original state.



Mike






You go in hard, and you go in fast.