.wav Pcm Vs Adpcm Vs Mp3

[pumper]

going through menus on my "audio recording thing-a-ma-gig (Arcos HD, Ipod like device)"

I realized this morning I had set it for a compression format, or it came set as, ADPCM which is apparently a .wav 4x compression format .. which has been optimized for low sample rate voice recording

.. my device does have a (never used) microphone for voice recording.

I was unaware there was a 'native' .wav compression .. my recorder apparently has turned 16 bit input into 4 bit recordings .. perhaps for the entire 1.5 years I have used it!

I have several 100s of hours of sirrius satellite audio recordings.

darn!

I then converted the low fidelity .wav to MP3s .. guess it's a good thing my ears are old & frequency limited.

when they market viagra for ears I may notice the difference!

perhaps I should have read the instruction manual.

any way heads up if you use a portable device to record music.

[Rice_King]

Maybe the "heads up" you should be referencing here is not about using "portable devices to record music." Instead, your "heads up" should be to "always have a backup copy of the data that you value."

Seriously, I do feel your pain and I am sorry for the loss of your lossless.