May I ask 'Why' you are reconverting the files? Doing such whether upping or downing the bitrate will result in loss of quality of the file. mp3 is a Lossy format which means with each conversion audio information is thrown away.

It's a little like taking a photo with 100,000 colors in it. Saving it as a medium quality JPEG image file or in audio would be like converting a WAV / AIFF file as an mp3 which reduces it to perhaps 40,000 colors if it were a photo. Then re-saving the image which reduces it to 32,000 colors, etc. If you can gradually picture how it works with 'Lossy' formats whether they be image or audio format. Example of a lossy format is JPG. Take a photo & save it as lowest quality & see how it looks. That's what continually saving into lossy formats does.

As for LW reading audio bitrates, it has been known to read them incorrectly. This was also a problem with LW 4 & still exists now. LW 5 has no refresh button as LW 4 had so you will most likely need to restart LW for it to reread the bitrates. Point made to me by a LW dev about this issue was, what LW may incorrectly show you on your LW's shares window will not be what others see.

Switch is a program I also use occasionally. However there are better converters around.

Next point:

If I am seeking a song I have wanted to have for years .. I find yours ... why should i only have a reconverted mp3 at 128 kbps when I want the best quality I can obtain because that song was what was played at my mom's funeral ... or at my wedding .. etc.

Why should I have a quality of 1 out of 10 JPeg image when I could have quality 5 or 6 which you originally downloaded. OR for that matter why couldn't I have the original TIFF or other uncompressed image file if that's how you downloaded it .. TIFF as image equivalent of WAV / FLAC / AIFF, etc.

BTW if you re-save / convert a Lossy format into the same or other Lossy format no matter whether the conversion / re-save quality is set to maximum will still result in 'some' quality loss at least. Examples: mp3 maximum quality does not equal WAV or other equivalent. JPG maximum quality does not equal TIFF or Photoshop or PNG lossless quality.