On 18/05/2020 19:27, Bert Coules wrote:
Perhaps only peripherally DIY but there's such a lot of computer
expertise here.

I was surprised today to see a reference to "a poor quality
fifth-generation mp3 file" - I thought that digital files (of whatever
format) reproduced exactly from generation to generation with no
deterioration at all.Â* Am I mistaken?Â* If mp3s do indeed get
progressively worse when repeatedly dubbed I'm going to have to rethink
the audio project I'm currently working on.

Thanks.
It depends. Obviously if you copy the file, it will be the same, but if
you encode to MP3, then re-encode that again for some reason, you get
even more loss and it will start to sound (even more?) horrible. If you
take a WAV, encode to MP3, then convert back to WAV, you don't get the
same file back.

Quite *why* you'd re-encode an MP3 is another matter.

If you take a lossless format (FLAC or WAV), then encode that to MP3
there's only one lot of loss.