Suppose I have a FLAC music file and I convert it to let’s say 192 kbps mp3 and then I use this 192 kbps file as a base and create another conversion to 160 kbps.
Not supose I take the source Flac file again and convert directly to 160 kbps.
Do both 160 kbps files have the same quality?
Tl;dr no
But what are you trying to do?
Simple. I have limited space in my phone and I want to store around 160 kbps mp3 files on it (VBR). So the question is what source file I should get for best quality. Of course Flac is best and if I can use 320 kbps files, it would still be worse than using Flac as source. I thinking about storage space here.
It is called generation loss. https://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/Generation.htm
With each lossy compression cycle you add more loss.
The remedy is called transcoding. You have your audio files in a lossless format and you convert them on the fly to a lossy format to save space for use on e.g. a mobile.
No.
You can test this for yourself.
- Open FLAC file in Audacity
- Save as 192 Kbps MP3
- Also as 160 Kbps MP3
- Close the FLAC file that’s open in Audacity
- Open the 192 Kbps MP3 you just saved
- Now save this as 160 Kbps MP3
- Close the 192 Kbps MP3 that’s open in Audacity
- Open the one of the 160 Kbps MP3 files and also import the other 160 Kbps MP3
- Select one of the tracks, all of it, and use Effect -> Invert
- Now save this as a WAV file
What you will get is a file that contains only the differences between these two MP3 files and nothing more. If there’s any difference you can either see it (check Spectrogram) or hear it. If the files are 100% identical this exported WAV file will be 100% empty.
Hope that made sense.
No, each time you introduce a lossy encode you’ll further degrade the file beyond the strict lossless > lossy.
Why on earth would you even consider doing this?
Say I need to store 160 kbps mp3’s on my phone. No more than 160 kbps. Then I learned it’s best to search for a lossless format and convert to 160 then to grab anything above 160 and bellow 320 kbps. So for example it’s best to avoid grabing a 256 kbps file and go straight to Flac to convert to 160. Got it?