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So I have quite a bunch of these m4a files and I want to know if converting 128kbps m4a to mp3 will degrade it's quality in any way.

For those who ask why I do it I have huge podcast library and it's in MP3 so I would like to have these full folders look nice as well.

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    In what way do .m4a files not look nice? (Also, what audio codec do those .m4a files use -- AAC?)
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Jun 1, 2019 at 20:22
  • I didn't meant it that way...m4a's are nice but the whole folder with hundreds of files looks cleaner when every file have the same type like already mentioned (M4A, MP3...) and yes, it uses AAC
    – Ivo
    Commented Jun 1, 2019 at 20:33

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Typically both m4a and mp3 contain lossy compressed audio data. The conversion of one format of data to another means that it will be decoded and passed through another encoder which will "lose" some amount of data in order to achieve high compression ratio.

Even encoding from the same type to the same type will lose some data with each encode and this problem is known as generation loss. It happens due to the fact that that each encode relies on some (usually audibly trivial) approximations that allow for higher compression, on each pass those successive approximations change subtly and introduce unwanted noise.

Out of preference you should prefer not to transcode audio or video data in this way. For one or two transcode cycles you might be alright, but eventually it will get to a point where it is noticable as noise or compression artifacts in the sound.

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