using ableton to align beats to grid, loss of fidelity in the process?

[diezdiazgiant]

so i have been using ableton to get everything in time, and the plan is to render the files so they can be played in traktor. now it occurred to me that there may be some loss in fidelity doing this process with mp3's in that ableton renders the product into a wav file, which is dumped into audacity and then saved again as a mp3 file. is this correct?

is the only real way to avoid this degrading is by starting the process with only wav files?

[sine143]

just export out of audacity as .wav?

[Zac Kyoti]

RE-encoding a file that started out as an mp3 or other lossy format back into a lossy format will ALWAYS result in a file that is degraded next to the original file. It doesn't matter how many lossless steps (wav, aiff, etc) are in between. Transcoding from mp3 to wav or whatever won't take more data out of the file, but do not re-encode. If you must start out your processing with an mp3 or other lossy format, save the result as a wav/aiff and use that.

Keep in mind the warping process itself will have a destructive effect on the sound as well, so if you need to use an mp3, try various warp modes to get the best result for the track, and be prepared to hear a loss in quality. The less warp that needs to be applied, the better your result is going to be.

[sine143]

like I said... just re encode into .wav

then you have no extra losses other than the warping losses.