question on re-coding music

Greetings...

My brother has ripped his cd collection but doesn't know much about computers. So I set up an FTP server on his computer and have downloaded all his music (he's in a different state, or I'd have just taken my external drive over there). He has ripped to .wma format at 160 kbps. (And please, no discussions on why this bit rate here, either).

I have converted the wma files to mp3 using the dbPowerAmp lame encoder, using high quality settings at 160 kbps variable rate. My question comes here: when I view the files in my mp3 organizer software, more than quite a few are shown at 128 kbps and lower (down to 64 kbps). Has the quality really been reduced this much, or am I just imagining paranoia? I'm even more confused because some even show at 320 kbps. I'm thinking about re-downloading and converting using the constant bit rate.

Thanks for the audiophile input on this!
Bill

They're encoded with a variable bitrate.
The reason you see different bitrates in your cataloguing software is that it's not reading the whole file - probably just the header. When you play one of the files you'll probably find that it starts at the bitrate you're seeing, then changes.

There's a couple of problems with the files you have...
1. he encoded them in WMA format which isn't that good,
2. you've decoded and re-encoded them and the quality has suffered.

Get him to rip them properly and encode with LAME, then download them again.

Perhaps you could try to burn the WMA files to a CD and them rip them to mp3 on your computer with the quality you want. I usually like 192kbps. Good luck!