AIFF's to MP3's ??

I've purchased a few tracks over the internet and they provide mp3 format at 320.

Ive taken some of these mp3's, dropped them into ableton LIVE and created some remixes. Ableton only lets me render the track as an AIFF.

When I render it out, the settings are:

AIFF
16bit
44100hz

roughly around 50-70 mbs per song



The question I'm asking, is this equivalent (sound quality wise) as 320? Would this setting be sufficient?

I'm pretty sure you cant take a 320 mp3 and make it sound more better than it was. I just want to know if these aiff's arent being rendered any lower than when I had purchased them.

rendering them any higher gives crazy file sizes!

AIFF is basicly the same as a wav file, it contains raw audio data that will not have to be decompressed when playing it - this means it will use less CPU. So actually the AIFF file is a higher quality than the 320 mp3 files - but you wont a hear the difference because they were originally mp3's to begin with.

Also there is no way to increase the sound quality of a 320 mp3 file, you can only decrease quality not increase.