Hello, I've been puzzled by this problem : everyone knows that the music files, in mp3 or other formats, have a quality determined by the bitrate. I've been wondering myself for a while what is the decent minimum.

I know it may sound a bit stupid for a music specialist, but the question really puzzles me. The maximum quality of mp3 is 320 kbps, the radio format is 128 kbps. I don't think I ever noticed obvious differences between the two, someone told me that the low quality becomes obvious below 108 kbps. Then what's the point in having 320 kbps instead of 128? And whatever, I've noted that the casual listener's ear doesn't notice the difference, even below. My little brother does listen to music as low as 96 kbps, and is not bothered by that.

I arbitrarily use a minimum of 160 kbps. What do you think ?

128 sounds perfectly fine to my ears.

I always try to rip at 320. Try listening to "Losing my Edge" by LCD Soundsystem for comparison. The difference is in the clarity and the fullness of the sound.

I can hear the difference between 128 and 160 quite often, and sometimes I'm pretty sure I can hear the difference between 160 and 256, so I just try to get 256+ always. Of course I do have some really nice speakers attached to my PC. It's not like I don't have enough space on my hard disks either, so there's really no reason not to have 256+.

So you say 256 is a good minimum? Is the difference between 256 and 320 really obvious?

128 is fine - I convert everything I download to that,it just takes up too much space otherwise. On my ipod,quality v quantity - quantity wins every time...

I personally can't tell the difference between 256 and 320. If both are possible I'll get the 320 for PC, because there's no lack of diskspace there, and 256 for on my phone, even though I'm not really close to filling that one up either.

Edit: And for my favorite albums I'm really partial to FLAC. I might be imagining it, but I think it really sounds better than 320. Just way too damn big, even for a datahogger like me (just bought another 2TB HDD).

I've been downloading music for almost a decade now, and I can usually tell if something is below 128, so I try to keep all my music at a minimum of 128 kbps. When I actually rip CDs, I always rip at 192 kbps. I personally can't really tell the difference between 128 and 192 (or even 160), so it's mostly a matter of how much space you want to take up on your hard drive. If you've got the room to spare, and you believe that there is a significant difference between 128 and a higher number, I'd say go for it.

To answer your question of "what is a decent minimum," I'd have to say it's all a matter of personal taste. If you think 128 is good enough, then go with 128. If you think you can hear a difference between that and a higher number, go with the higher number. To me, the decent minimum is whatever you think it is. And also how much hard drive space you're willing to use.

Speaking of FLAC, just how exactly do you use that? I keep running into it on torrenting sites, and I'm not sure if I can play it on my computer. Any suggestions?

I go 320. In a day and age of accelerated technological growth and computing power, hard drive space is a non-issue.

FLAC is exactly what it stands for: a Free Lossless Audio Codec/format. Smaller in size than a .wav (a feat which I still haven't wrapped my brain around), it can be played using Winamp, and other players, EXCEPT... (you guessed it), iTunes.

When the day comes that iPods can play FLAC files, this will be one happy boy. In the meantime, I play FLAC using Winamp w/ the Izotope Ozone plugin (a free add-on that makes digital music sound incredible).

If iPods could play FLAC files, there would be no way to fit my entire collection on there. I already have 90GB of MP3s.

I generally like to have at least 128 kbps. Anything less than that and I find the decrease in quality very noticeable.

Guess I'll have to do tests. Thanks everyone! And I think I won't go for FLAC for the moment. Way too big, for my current HDs.

Just do variable bitrate at the highest settings. No need to do 320 or even 256 if you are using a lossy codec. Variable bitrate will give you the highest quality needed with lower file sizes.

It's hard to recommend lossless even though I like to archive in Apple Lossless and let my iPhone convert it down for space reasons. There just isn't a standard yet for lossless music and it's kind of a hassle if you need to switch to another format with big libraries. It's funny that the standard in lossless, FLAC, can't be played on hardly any mp3 players on the market. I think more people would convert to lossless quality if a universal standard like mp3 was set. Although, space has become an issue since a lot of people are using phones with limited space as their portable device so that's an issue to. Streaming is quickly making purchasing digital music obsolete anyway, but with streaming we're back to the days of 128K bitrates being the standard...