Spoon - Does Re-encoding Lower Quality?

[holygamer999]

Does re-encoding a 320 Kbps MP3 to 256 Kbps give worse sounding quality than if I ripped to 256 Kbps in the first place?

[eaglescout1998]

Re: Spoon - Does Re-encoding Lower Quality?

Yes. Any time you convert from one lossy codec to another, you're going to wind up with a loss of quality . . . even if you transcode to a higher bitrate.

But whether or not you would be able to actually hear a difference is a question only you can answer.

[holygamer999]

Re: Spoon - Does Re-encoding Lower Quality?

I know you lose quality but I was just wondering if the 2nd encoding only throws away the parts needed to lower from 320 Kbps to 256 Kbps or does it just re-encode the whole thing?

Also a seperate issue I have is that I have some files which are in OGG format 128 Kbps. I have to convert them to MP3 but should I use 128 Kbps or should I use a higher bitrate to prevent excessive quality loss?

[garym]

Re: Spoon - Does Re-encoding Lower Quality?

it reencodes the entire thing (not just some diff between 320 and 256). On the OGG 128, if you want to be sure to lose NOTHING from these, you should encode to lossless (e.g., FLAC). But if you want lossy, I'd use the best I could do (320 CBR).