Experiment: does transcoding from a low bitrate to a high bitrate improve quality?

[squall2072]

Thats so obvious that I can tell with my rubbish pc inbuilt speakers!!

Wow, I don't know if I feel pity for the masses or to laugh at them for listening to their 64KBS mp3s... Thats truely shocking... maybe with ibuds there is no difference though....??

 

[titaniumx3]

I doubt very many people listen to 64kbps mp3s. If they're ripping CDs themselves then its most likely the bitrate is going to be 128kbps or above (simply by using the default settings or some sort of preset). Most content downloaded from p2p is going to be 128kbps or more likely 192kbps.

For most situations 128kbps isn't that bad, especially with modern mp3 lame encoders.

 

[K2Grey]

Another way to put it (if you're arguing with someone else about it) is that lossless compression results in a file of equal quality. So 64kbps mp3 to 1114kbps WAV results in identical quality. It follows that any kind of lossy compression will have worse results than the WAV and thus worse quality. When put in this way some people might have an easier time understanding it.

 

[rhythmdevils]

so if you have a burned cd, in music format (not data), and the music files are 128K, how do you best import them onto your computer? I imported them lossless, cause i was scared of double compressing them, but It seems like a waste to have a lossless file encoded from a 128 source.

but if you set it at 128, its not retaining the oringinal compression, its actually re-compressing it, right?

 

[Bunnyears]

Try copying the cd to the hard drive, rather than using a program to reencode it. If you can't do that, then I think you will have to re-rip.

You should be able to drag and drop the files into your music library. Try to put them into a new folder so that you can find them easily if you have to retag them (sometimes the tagging gets lost -- especially with itunes).

 

[jagorev]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhythmdevils so if you have a burned cd, in music format (not data), and the music files are 128K, how do you best import them onto your computer? I imported them lossless, cause i was scared of double compressing them, but It seems like a waste to have a lossless file encoded from a 128 source. but if you set it at 128, its not retaining the oringinal compression, its actually re-compressing it, right?

This is tricky. You really don't want to compress it in any other lossy format. FLAC would probably be the best way of preserving sound quality (but the bitrate shown by FLAC will be much higher than 128, typically).