If I'm recording into Goldwave and my source is 128 kbps, 44,100 khz stereo is there any benefit at all to saving the recorded track at a higher bit rate, say 160? Or am I just wasting space. Maybe it helps reduce the "copy of a copy" effect a little bit.
My suspicion is that 128 bit might as well be saved as 128 bit because it won't be improved, but I'll toss it out just to confirm.
Yes, if you are editing the file and you therefore must recode, this will reduce the copy of a copy effect. But, I have no idea if the difference will be audible. At the extreme, if you save it as an uncompressed WAV file you will completely eliminate the additional loss.
Thanks for your insight DougDbug, I guess until space becomes an issue I'll go ahead and do my saving as 160 kbps. I'm glad to hear from someone who has a lot of experience!