Poor audio quality

[Doug Sundquist]

I like to strip audio out of some of my video and use that as background for photo stories and such. Saving as WMA format results in a hollow or tinny sound with some echoing. I can save in WAV format and that seems to work. mpa and mp4 seem OK too but I have little use for those in other applications. Not a big deal because I can get this done other ways but I wondered if there was a good explanation. I also notice in the details that it's saving in mono format for dial up modem so maybe that's it.
Thanks
Doug

[Black Lab]

I also notice in the details that it's saving in mono format for dial up modem so maybe that's it.

Probably. It is my experience that WAV is a rock solid format. Since you have found other formats that work I would stick with them.

[DVDDoug]

The rule-of-thumb for both audio and video is: The less compressed, the better.

Regular WAV files are uncompressed, so this is the "best" audio format.

Less-compressed files are easier to edit and easier to convert/transcode. And, most audio and video compression schemes are lossy, so less compression means better quality.

With lossy compression, data is thrown-away. The compression algorithm tries to throw-away the least important data. So, if you use a high-enough bitrate the compressed file should sound identical to the original. With a low bitrate, it can sound like a cell phone. "Mono for dial-up" would be a low-bitrate setting... You can't send "CD quality" audio over a modem in real-time. (high bitrate = bigger file = less data thrown-away)

If your original video contains compressed audio, conversion to a different compressed-format (or re-compressing to the same format) requires a 2nd "lossy" compression step which may degrade the audio quality.

With a high bitrate (...say 256kbps) all of the formats should sound like the original file. At lower bitrates, some compression schemes work better than others.