Vista - When converting you can only go down, right?

I know one can go from mp3 to flac and vice versa.

What I mean is data is only lost through conversion, right? Makes absolute sense so it's probably a dumb question, but I'm used to surprises at times.

However other than that, I heard kbps and overall file size do not necessarily equal sound quality you here, is that right? I would guess so since mp3 to wav is only going to sound as good as the mp3.

However what about kbps? Does that necessarily denote sound quality or is that just a mark of the file extension (mp3, wav, etc.?)

Thanks. Wish there was just one codec for all.

???

In general the higher the bit rate (kps) the higher the sound quality. This of course can vary greatly depending on the codec used to encode. Yes, you can convert a FLAC file to an MP3, and you will lose data and, to some degree, sound quality (though, you may not be able to HEAR the difference), but no, it's not vice versa, there is no benefit of going MP3 to FLAC, because all you will be doing it increasing the file size, you will not be improving the quality at all.

Also, once a file is in a "lossy" format, such as MP3, you should not re-convert it to any other format or bitrate, even if it's "down" because that will result in even greater quality loss. IE, an MP3 encoded at 320, then downsampled to 192 will have lower audio quality than an MP3 encoded directly from CD to 192.

Thanks. MP3 320kbps is great btw. I almost always notice a difference between that and 128, 160 and 192. 256 though...is pretty much the same. Thing is I use my psp for music since it also plays games and I want to play games, but it doesn't support flac files, they are fairly huge also so I won't be able to fit as much songs on my psp (think the memory card is 2 GB). It is also hard to find flac torrents for some albums. MP3 is apparently the most common type of music file.

And LOL @ 64 and 96bit, or whatever. Crappy!