Mp3 To Wma

[hungrylilboy]

ok the manual (yes i read it) says that the number of files is based on 128kp/s for mp3 and 64kb/s for wma.

can someone confirm or deny that the quality changes for this difference?

[nostalgia]

Once read in a Dutch computermagazine that WMA has more quality with less data so this could mean that a "big" MP3 with quality 128 matches a smaller WMA 64 file.

edit: never tested it myself. I convert downloaded WMA to MP3's.

[Chewie]

Look, if you can imagine scrunching up a brown paper bag then opening it out again, you can imagine that when re-opened, the paper bag will have creases in it, yet still be recognisable as a paper bag.
That is what you do when you compress an audio clip to an mp3 or wma file; there is some quality loss, and the more it's compressed, the more quality is lost.
Now if you were to again crumple up the paper bag and re-open it, there would be more noticeable creases in it, yes?
Right, that is how you must imagine the audio that you compress once, then uncompress and compress again as something else... there is a quality loss even if the sizes after first and last compression are the same.

Don't re-encode compressed audio/video clips because you'll lose quality that cannot be replaced.

[nostalgia]

Now this is an example story I even understand .
But seriously, you're right, the more you compress and decompress the less the quality gets. But compressing 1 or 2 times in a fairly good bitrate doesn't give that much qualityloss that most people would notice. The bitrate has to be 192 or higher. Encoders are just filtering out audiofrequencies the human ear can't cope with or has trouble coping with. Next they filter out tones that sound the same. I you aren't an experienced listener (e.g. studio-engineer or whatever) then it is hard to hear the difference between a compressed MP3 or WMA on a high bitrate and the original audio track. But nevertheless it is qualityloss cause sounds are filtered out.
So compressing once or twice on a high bitrate is fairly safe but after that it even becomes noticable to my ears and I'm not an expert.