

It depends on a few different factors, but this is definitely something you should think about beforehand and have a clear plan for. So, is WAV or MP3 the best for the sound quality of your project? Now, we suggest you listen to the same music piece in the MP3 and WAV formats. Even though a lot of quality got lost, it didn’t lose 2/3rds of its data, so you can definitely see why MP3 files have such widespread usage. The flipside, as you would expect, is the fact that the MP3 file, even at its highest possible quality, was 1/3rd of the size. If you were to test with a lower quality file then you may find even more data gets lost.

This was testing with a 320 kbps MP3, too. It felt like the songs we tested lost a little brightness, and some of the instruments felt a little flat as a result. Converting the file format using an MP3 encoder noticeably lost some detail, especially in the high-end frequencies. Is MP3 or WAV better? Well, there are no surprises there. We tested a 24-bit WAV file and also ran it through a quick MP3 encoder to get a proper WAV versus MP3 test. Of course, the more the audio has in terms of harmonic frequencies, the more likely it is that there is going to be a difference. We performed a side-by-side test of a lossless WAV file and a lossy MP3 to test out the sound firsthand.
