Increasing audio bitrate?
 

I have avi with audio format: MPEG Layer-3,160 kBit/s, 44,100 Hz, Stereo
I encoded it to 160kbps stereo mp2 and I think there is no point of increasing the bitrate in the mp2 higher then the source bitrate. But when I encode the audio to 192 kbps mp2 for example the filesize is bigger. I wonder if this difference is real and the quality is higher, or if there is just "emptiness" instead of audio information?

mp2 and mp3 are two format very different.

mp3 is more compressed than mp2 and actually to convert a 160 Kbs mp3 in mp2 is better to use an upper bitrate like 192 Kbs.

What you have to understand is that your mp3 is first uncompressed (in memory) to PCM format and then compressed again in the destination format (here, mp2).
So the tranformation is not a simple "empty hole filling", is really a brand new compression that is done. Exactly as is you used a wav for input.

Thank you, Dialhot, it seems that I have lost much audio quality until today:)