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All right, forgive the relative ignorance of how digital audio works, but I have a question. If I have a 256 kbps mp3, and I convert it to a .wav file, and then convert it back to a 256 kbps mp3, will the final result be identical to the mp3 I started with, or does the process of converting formats back and forth cause some type of loss?

You'll get loss. Kind of like saving and re-saving a JPEG.

Yep. You'll get generational loss with most any kind of lossy compression.

It's not really "converting formats" per se that causes the loss, it's re-encoding an already encoded file. (The intermediate WAV step is neutral, equivalent to decoding the MP3 file before re-encoding it.)

Ryan

Thanks guys.