ATRAC to Wav degradation?

[photoman]

Hi, I have a few questions

1) Is there degradation to audio files when converting them from ATRAC3 to CD-DA format? I.e. Lets say I convert a 192kbs ATRAC3 file to a WAV file, and put both on my iPOD. Then I listen with a pair of good quality headphones, and I play a ATRAC 3 file and converted WAV file back to back. Should I notice ANY difference? Or is the decompression algorithm that allows me to listen to the ATRAC3 file the same algorithm that is used to convert from ATRAC3 to WAV?

2) Lets take this example one step further, say I take an original WAV file ripped from a CD, and convert it to ATRAC3 and back to CD-DA format. I listen and compare the original track from the CD and the WAV to ATRAC to WAV. Will there be any further degradation of the file that was converted (besides what is normally expected from the ATRAC process) when converting ATRAC3 to the CD-DA format (so I can play it on a CD player)?

3) What is the best way to compare a untouched WAV file and an ATRAC3 file?

4) Is the ATRAC3 to WAV conversion just an "inverse transform" (inverse algorithm), or something different?

Thanks so much,

Photoman

[pata2001]

1. No. CDDA/WAV is uncompressed, so the quality will be equal to whatever original you have (Atrac3).

2. The CD converted from Atrac3 will technically sound worse than the original CD obviously. However, there shouldn't be further degradation when converting form Atrac3 to CDDA, just like your first question.

3. Use foobar with the ABX plugin. Convert the Atrac3 track to WAV, then you can use foobar to ABX the original WAV and the WAV from the Atrac3 file.

4. No. The software simply decode the Atrac3 file into uncompressed WAV. Atrac3 is lossy compression, so there is no going back to the original quality ever.