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Re-compressing is a BAD IDEA
Authored by: gidds on Jun 20, '03 11:15:44AM
If you recompress from a file that's already compressed, you'll end up with a worse-sounding result than if you'd compressed at that bitrate straight from CD.  The reason is that each compression is lossy; each compression introduces more artefacts.  When you re-encode, the encoder is trying to make the best match it can to something that's already different from the original.

As always, how much worse it is depends on the material, the format, the encoder(s) involved, &c &c.  You might consider that a price worth paying for not having to re-rip all your CDs.  But you should at least be aware of the problem.

Far better to pick the right bitrate in the first place!

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Andy/

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