MP3 conversion.

[Michael Haselman]

I ripped a bunch of my cd's to MP3 at 56k BPS. If I convert them with Musicmatch to 64k or higher, will it be the same quality as ripping them at the higher bitrate from the cd?

[Dave Van Allen]

not likely.

any loss of fidelity has already ocurred in the initial encoding; you can re encode them at a higher rate, but this will not add back what was lost in the initial encoding.

they probably won't sound any different after an upward rate conversion.

and the difference prolly ain't that much from encoding at 64 in the first place.

why should it matter if you can listen to 'em and enjoy the music? the only time I can think of is in streaming webradio where the files all should have matching encode rate...

it's up to you whether it's worth re-ripping.

[Tommy Mc]

Michael, as Dave says, you can't get back quality you already lost, and if they sound ok to you, just leave them. Usually however, people consider settings of 128K absolute minimum for decent quality, so it might make more sense to re-rip them at a higher bitrate.