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Hi. My macbook hard drive broke (they are apparantly prone to mechanical failure), and all I have left of several tracks due for release, are 320 mp3's.
I am aware that mastering companies will master a 320 mp3, but will the quality be good enough for a digital release? My thoughts were that since the final format will be 320 mp3 anyway, it shouldnt matter, but I don't want to take any chances.

Cheers,

James

What do you mean when you say your hard drive 'broke'? Data recovery is almost always possible...

Mechanical failure on a Seagate 2.5 inch hard drive that ships with the Core 2 Duo 2.16 Ghz macbooks. It's a known problem where the the head in the drive becomes detached from the read/write arms, causing the latter to "gouge deep scratches" in the disk.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/warning/seag ... 316350.php

Even if it were possible, data recovery costs than I can afford. The cheapest data recovery company I contacted quoted me 500 pounds. Data recovery on a logistical failure such as inaccessible data is usually doable, but this is mechanical, which, as I have found out, is a lot harder to sort out.

So I can't get it back, but i'd appreciate any answers on my original question.

Cheers

Anybody able to give advice on this?

If you can't do data recovery, then it sounds like you have no other choice than to use the 320s. At least you have 320s and not 128s. If you're gonna work them over again, convert them to some high resolution wav, say 32 bit float. It probably won't make much difference, but at least you can be sure you wont lose resolution again. Do your EQing to those high resolution WAVs, then render that to 320 again. And always backup at least a 24bit (or 32 even) version of each file on CD-ROM or DVD.

320Kbps MP3s should be ok, a lot of the smaller online stores sell these over WAVs anyway to save on virtual self space.

That being said, it is still a compressed format, which means you've lost something from the orignal WAV. But only your ear is going to judge whether what you've lost is worth ditching the whole tune for.

Thanks for the advice guys, really appreciate it!

backup in future.

i personally cant tell the difference between a 320 and a wav, maybe cos my ears are fucked but still, i have my suspiciouns that theres not really much difference at all

I had a friend do a bit of mastering to a 320 of mine and didnt even know it was gonna happen. but it turned out pretty sharp anyways. When played out it sounds fine and ive never ahd any complaints from anyone about it
So, obviously its not the prefered method, but its DEFenitely still worth giving a go

All digital stores must have content uploaded in FLAC or WAV form... Some charge more for WAV's and FLAC's, so really you'd be ripping off your customers by selling them a 320 encoded to WAV for twice the money. Also as a label I wouldn't be ok with that, so at least make sure they know!

cheers

Yeah, better off doing any mastering to the uncompressed WAV or FLAC file. Once you start trying to polish an mp3 you start colouring the sound.