MP3 Laser Show

Just curious... has anyone who using audio equipment for streaming ever tried converting the WAV file to MP3 and then playing back the MP3? I'm curious to know how much it affects the laser show. I'm sure it messes some things up but I have no idea how much. It would be fun to see videos of shows with different compression and different compression formats. I no longer have a working sound card DAC so I am a bit out of luck but am wondering if anyone has every tried it and can share the results.

I've never tried it, but something tells me that things like dwell and any time a consistent voltage needs to be held for many samples in a row would not make it through the compression process. In order words, all the information that requires a direct unfiltered connection from the dac would be lost.

If you want, you could try it yourself. You can display a wav file in real-time on the screen with LB. So you'd have to convert wav to mp3 back to wav.

Cool. That's a good way to try it out without freaking out the scanners. I'll have to give that a try sometime.

I don't think there is such a thing as a 6 channel mp3. So you won't get color or blanking. But LB can open 2 channel as all white with no blanking.

I didn't even think about that. There is bound to be some sort of compressed multichannel audio file, though.

Well, Dolby Surround is multichannel encoded into just stereo. Using some sophisticated signal phase magic, it's possible to expand that stereo into full surround sound, but there is no noticeable effect on the quality of the stereo original.

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Originally Posted by james

Well, Dolby Surround is multichannel encoded into just stereo. Using some sophisticated signal phase magic, it's possible to expand that stereo into full surround sound, but there is no noticeable effect on the quality of the stereo original.

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Get with the times- Dolby Surround is late 80's... :rolleyes: AC3 files, AKA Dolby Digital (DVD's & Blu ray) is discrete multichannel utilizing significant data reduction.

Audacity supports saving a wave as AC3, but it does require downloading additional support files; a link is provided in the app.