Encoding Quality (a few questions)

[phyared]

- In WMA9, what is the quality difference between VBR 98 and VBR 192 2-pass with the powerpack installed? 192 2-pass seems to produce smaller files.

- What is the best format (quality-wise) to encode mono files? Ís it possible that in WMA, anything above 48 b/s would be a waste?

- When converting from WMA9 VBR 98 to MP3, what would the be the MP3 encoding quality that would result in minimum loss?

[Spoon]

VBR 2 pass is supposed to created higher quality files, but I cannot say by how much.

>to encode mono files? Ís it possible that in WMA, anything above 48 b/s would be a waste?

I wouldn't think so, 48Kbps is quite low.

>what would the be the MP3 encoding quality that would result in minimum loss?

This would be the highest quality mp3 files, 320Kbps.

[phyared]

Thank you. Perhaps I should rephrase my first question.

I listen mostly to classical music and quality is important for me because I may burn an audio CD from my WMA files.

192 VBR 2-pass seems to be capped at 192 Kb/s. When I rip using VBR 98, I often get files with bitrates higher than 300 Kb/s. If I convert to 192 VBR 2-pass those files ripped at VBR 98 that were encoded at higher than 300 Kb/s, will the files loose information / quality?

Thanks

[Spoon]

I convert to 192 VBR 2-pass those files ripped at VBR 98 that were encoded at higher than 300 Kb/s, will the files loose information / quality?

Yes, the thing to remember about lossy conversions, quality is always lost each conversion.