What Bitrate For MP3 Downloads?

i use 224 or 192

gotta be at least 192...

There is a very noticable difference between 128 and 192

192 the best

No way dude 128 is only decent for electronic stuff and it sucks for pretty much everything else. I've noticed that when rock is encoded at 128kps it loses some of the low frequencies.

For most genres 160 is good enough and that's what I'd say is the minimum for CD quality. For each additional instrument that the track contains adds additional information so encoding an orchestra at 128kps just isn't going to work out too good.

When I ripped all my CDs I did it at 320 since storage even on portables isn't as big of an issue as it used to be. MP3 is a lossy codec so once you've encoded it a particular bitrate the other info is gone for good. I'd rather have a large block of stone with some extra to carve off later should I decide to re-encode the tracks using a different codec

If file size is a huge concern for ya then you should go with variable bitrate encoding (VBR) with an average of 192 would be best solution.

Some programs call 128 cd quality, but its not true.

audio cds > 1411 kbps