Hi savvy audio ppl,
A client has requested that we no longer deliver their radio commercial audio files in .wav but now want “hi-res MP3.”
MP3 are NOT hi-res. Am I missing some new audio format?
I’m thinking the “suits” that send the commercials to Pandora and terrestrial radio, etc., are confuddled.
Thoughts?
I suppose they mean 320 kbps MP3 (which is pretty much the minimum for avoiding blatantly obvious artifacts in most material), but indeed; that’s still lossy compression, and certainly not suitable for anything that might be processed further, as that can easily bring the artifacts up to audible levels. And radio used to involve VERY aggressive dynamics processing of everything! Not sure if that’s still the case.
If they want smaller files, FLAC would probably be the correct format, as that’s equivalent to WAV, apart from the extra CPU load when encoding and decoding.
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Thanks for the input, David… My thoughts exactly. There is NO SUCH thing as a hi-res MP3.
Well, the positive is they’re saving me time. No more sending out a .wav and an MP3 to radio – for this client anyway… 
Thanks & be well!
I read of a new format MQA, that for some frequency use the mp3 format and for hi freq use a lossless format. I know that you need some specifict decoder to create and listen.