MP3s to CD: does "on-the-fly" burning give same audio quality as doing it in 2 steps?!..

wrote in message ...
Hi,

Could anyone please tell me which programs gives the best audio quality
when you want to burn an audio cd from mp3 files?! Nero does everything
in one step "on-the-fly" (from mp3 to audio cd), but how good is the
quality of the internal mp3 decoder of Nero?! Also, is it true that you
can get better audio quality if you use different programs to first
decode the mp3 files to wav (like with RazorLAME) and then use an audio
cd burning program to make the audio cd like Nero (or another program?),
instead of burning mp3s "on-the-fly" to cd with software like Nero, or
won't you hear much difference in quality?! Also, at which speed should
you burn for best audio quality or doesn't this make much difference if
you have a fast Pentium 4 with a good quality writer like Plextor?!..

Anybody has experimented with all this for creating audio cds with the
best audio quality? Which program or combination of programs, decoders
gives the best audio quality? Also, is it only usefull to use RazorLAME
as mp3 decoder if the mp3 files where encoded with LAME, which you don't
know when you download mp3s from all over the internet or is LAME always
the best decoder, irrespective of wich mp3 decoder was used to create
the mp3 files?!

Could anyone please tell me which software, etc.. will give me the best
audio quality and if I should do it in 2 steps or if I can do it in 1
step like in Nero?! And what about best burning speed and any other
things I should know? Can you use the LAME decoder in Nero by the way?

Thanks in advance for all good feedback!


AFAIK LAME is an encoder, so you wouldn't be using it to decode from MP3 to
WAV, just encoding from WAV to MP3.

If you want to find out, decode an MP3 file to a WAV, make a new audio cd
project, 1st track is from the MP3, 2nd track is from the WAV.

There's no reason why they should sound different....afaik there's only 1
possible sound the MP3 bits can make if arranged in that order, so as to
create your favorite tunes (ie, encoders can vary quality, but decoding
should remain dependent upon the initial quality set by the encoder).