My music collection is in WMA lossless and I was thinking about converting to MP3 so I can play on other devices, including a SMC wireless system. Will I lose audio quality if I change from WMA lossless to MP3? I was thinking about using the Switch app TIA
Well, yes. Will you notice it? Use a good encoder (LAME) and don't scrimp on the bitrate and probably not. Go ahead, try it and see if you like it...
to expand on what was stated above... technically, there shouldn't be quality loss when going from a lossless format to another lossless format. going from a lossless to a lossy (mp3) shouldn't result in quality loss, but be sure to encode the mp3 properly. the bottom line is that even with lossless formats, the more times you transcode an audio file, the more chances there are for errors and general quality loss. a one time transcode from lossless wma to mp3 should sound fine, if you do the following steps: download and install dBPowerAMP (a very good FREE audio converter utility). their website is in my sig below. from the "codec-central" portion of their website, download and install the lossless wma amd LAME mp3 codecs after install dBPowerAMP. When converting your files, select LAME as the mp3 encoder, and select alt-extreme VBR 192 kbps encoding settings. this will result in the highest quality possible. in the future, just rip your CDs directly to mp3. the one and ONLY program you guys should be using to do so is EAC (exact audio copy). It is the ripper that other rippers get wet dreams about wishing they could be like EAC. it is free, has tons of features, and is the only ripper that does a true 100% accurate rip of an audio CD. when combined with the LAME mp3 DLL plugin, you will create the best quality mp3s possible. enjoy
no no no you cannot re encode an mp3 or wma file to a higher bitrate mp3 or wma or other lossy file for better quality. that makes absolutely no sense. converting any lossy format to lossy format results in serious quality loss.
