Hi,

Will a .wav file lose its quality, when it is frequently encoded and decoded from one format to another ?

yes. Each encoding [EDIT: each lossy encoding] adds quantization noise, and therefore lowers the overall, objective and sometimes subjective quality.

as everytime, it depends: if you encode lossless ie with flac, then no

Thanks a lot, guruboolez, robert !!

To my mind encoding from wav to, for example, mp3, then decompressing mp3 back to wav and then
again encoding into mp3 (and again, and again) will face the mp3's flaws and they will be more and more evident to the listener with each reencoding. Maybe this will help LAME developers to find and fix some weaknesses at an "early stage", so to say, won't it ?

Its not that flaws multiply, rather the "desired" quantization noise multiplies. MP3 is SUPPOSED to insert noise into a recording, so this wouldn't help LAME developers insert less, or anything like that.

What about compressed flac? Will successive decompressing and re-compressing flac files change the quality?

Flac is lossless, hence zero loss. You can encode and decode flac as many times as you want, and there will be zero loss in quality.

it seems you believe that compression = loss of quality. That is not the case, it depends on the codec used. FLAC compression still produces a lossless file, whereas MP3 compression produces a lossy file.

Edit: Added Quote.