Will converting a MPEG-1 Layer III to MP3 cause quality loss? by Nyarlathotep at 7:14 PM EDT on August 7, 2017
I'm looking at some SCD files that use a MPEG-1 Layer III Audio codec.
From what I understand, MPEG-1 Layer III is just the full title for MP3 and therefor should already be lossy, but foobar200 says the files encoding is lossless in the properties.
Regardless, with that in mind will simply changing the filename extension from .SCD to .MP3 effect the audio quality?
In my past experience I've learned that .SoundNodeWave files are typically just OGGs or MP3s in disguise, but I'm uncertain if it's the same thing with these SCD files.
Technically you can remove the SCD header from the MP3 and rename to MP3 to play and it'll work just fine. The only issue is you will lose the looping feature. Converting on the other hand is a no-no.
Simply changing the extension of the file won't change the data in the file. As bxaimc observes, SCD has a header before the MP3 data, but you can take advantage of the fact that a lot of MP3 decoders will skip arbitrary non MPEG frames to get to the good stuff.
okay, so I'm a little confused now, so simply changing the file header from SCD to MP3 won't effect it then?
I'm aware that converting lossy to lossy degrades the audio quality. But seeing as I'm just changing the filename header I don't know if it follows the same logic, especially since it's already MPEG-1 Layer III anyway.
I mean in the worse case scenario I could just make them all FLAC, but it seems kind of pointless when all the files are 128 kbps.
I'm aware that making them FLAC doesn't make them higher quality, just that they wouldn't lose quality as a result, but I'm still uncertain as to whether or not changing the SCD filename header to mp3 would do so or not seeing as it already uses a mp3 codec.
The only thing you are likely to lose by doing that is the looping ability. Be aware that many looping files have an abrupt end, since they are instead designed to loop and fade in software.