mp3: Different codecs/params -> Quality

rileydog22 wrote: Despite having very nice headphones (Etymotic Isolater 6i), 128 kb/s fixed rate sounds fine to me, and I hear no improvement when I use a higher bitrate.  It's actually a blessing; audiophiles are constantly eating harddrive space and blowing money on upgrades, while I'm happy with 128 kb/s mp3's and pretty shoddy audio equipment.

When hard drives go for 30 cents a gig these days, I dont see the reason not to bump up the bitrate a little...especially when there is clearly audible differences between 128 kbps and 160 kbps. Furthermore, if you use vbr instead of cbr, then at vbr with max bitrate at 192 kbps, you can have a compression that sounds a lot better and doesn't even take up much more room. I use "shoddy equipment" as well (75$ computer speakers), but I can still notice a significant difference between a 128 kbps file and a vbr max bitrate 192 file. I dunno, maybe I'm just stingy about these things.