@skinjob wrote:
To sum it up:
A lossy file cannot be converted to any other lossy format without incurring additional loss. Trying to increase the bitrate will only increase the file size, not the quality. Any lossy encoding (even a high bitrate one) is going to throw away data, so converting to a higher bitrate will actually lower the sound quality.
I suppose you could convert a lossy to losless without additional loss, but you’d be drastically increasing file size for no benefit.
This is why I always strongly reccomend riping to FLAC, even if you don’t intend to use the FLAC files for playback. Once your library is lossless, you can transcode to as many different codecs/bitrates as you like without ever having to rerip. Ripping & tagging is a very laborious process that you only ever want to go through once. Transcoding (whether “on the fly” or in bulk) is extremely easy.
I’ve ripped about 3000 CDs to FLAC and use Winamp to transcode to MP3 on the fly when syncing my Clip and Fuze. I use a lower bitrate on the 4GB Clip so I can squeeze more files in and a higher bitrate on the 8GB Fuze. Once I get a 16GB MicroSD card, I’ll probably switch to an even higher bitrate on the Fuze. With a lossless library, this is a piece of cake. With lossy, it would mean a lot of reripping.
QFT.
