best mp3 quality when converting existing wma2s & not waste space?

stu2

Hello Switch community;

I ripped my whole cd collection 11 or 12 yrs ago as wma files. My existing wmas are at a 128 bitrate I think.* Many are now missing or damaged.

I converted the wmas with Switch to mp3s.**

I wonder if 160 kbps CBR for the new mp3s is enough to capture whatever sound quality resides in the existing wmas?

Thank You!

Stu2

*In VLC, the Media Information says the Stream Bitrate flucuates between 109 kbps and 164, for example, when playing a wma file. Sample rate 44100 HZ; Bits per sample is 32.

**(In Switch I left the Encoder Options with Constant Bitrate of 160 kbps and the High Quality Encoding (Slower) checked. Channel Encoding Mode is Stereo and I did not check CRC to Detect Errors.)

stu2

I decided I want to convert my wmas to VBR mp3s, instead. Please see asterisk above about my wma bitrate uncertainty. Assuming that my original wmas are 128 kbps bitrate, that imposes an absolute upper limit on the sound quality of the future mp3s, right? So, that leads me to believe that I should convert to VBR mp3s at 32 (minimum) 128 (maximum) and quality of 4?

A higher maximum would just be a waste of disk space with no improvement in sound quality?

EDIT: By the way, I've just discovered that the sound quality of the mp3s will definitely be worse tno matter what han the wmas b/c it's lossy to lossy conversion. Oh well. Maybe I should get an old Zune. Or convert to a different format that I can use on the iphone that preserves the sound quality of the wmas. I'll look into it but any ideas? And again, there's the issue of not wasting disk space since the wma sound quality is limited in the first place.

Thanks,

Stu2