When you listen to an mp3, isn't it converted to a wav?

No.

Your MP3 decoder (that's the "dec" part of "codec") reads the file and sends information to your amplifier which converts it to an analog output and feeds it to the speakers. (This ignores amplifiers with digital outputs.)

Converting a .wav formatted file to an .mp3 format file involves a "lossy" compression routine, and while it is possible to reverse this conversion back to a .wav formatted file, the lost data cannot be recovered and quality loss will occur.


tanstaafl.