I'm also an audiophile.
However, I can actually tell the difference between 160 and higher resolutions. This is mostly because of my personal training in listening to harmonics, though. If not for that, I am not sure if I could heard the difference.

It might also help that I listen to good music, where most instruments are actually heard, instead of staticy and distorted shit.

Anyways, I usually stick with a 320-ish or higher resolution if I can.

For anything 320 or higher, I'd just go with lossless, the extra space lossless would use would not be that much more than 320kbps mp3s (320kbps is only 1/4 the size of CD quality source material).

Yeah, that is what I usually try to do.
I never actually rip CD's that I have already, but when downloading I always go for the lossless versions if possible.

Yeah, head-fi.org forums are scary. Whenever I go there I feel a bit creeped out. I get the impression what people squabble about there is about as meaningful as splitting hairs. "Ohh Headphone X with its inferior muddiness is an insult to my ears, get Headphone Z instead." Of course, both X and Z are probably around $750 each. I simply can't imagine a small difference in a particular quality of the music can be so meaningful to somebody. So I'm not an audiophile.

But maybe I am an "enthusiast," or perhaps just a lowly "acolyte." I did buy a pair of Grado headphones, because I wanted to see if indeed more "elite" headphones could bring out more depth from my music since I listen to it A LOT while at home. I couldn't tell you where they excel in enhancing any particular quality, but I do hear a lot more detail in terms of extra things in the background I didn't hear with other headphones, and this is what I was looking to achieve. But as far as having an entire rig (player/phones/amp/modified pads/modified Altoid can container/whatever) for home/portable/work...no way. As for bitrates, I'm not one of those that can really tell the difference. 128kbps mp3s sound just as fine as the handful of 320kbps I have.

I can recognize the difference between 160kbps and 320kbps, but I couldn't really care less. But when it's below 128kbps, it starts to bother me alot. I'd rather not listen to the song and spend my time searching for a better quality one. I'm also not picky with my headphones, speakers, sound equipment, etc. As long as I can hear it without it being complete crap I'm happy.

I have an okay ear for sound quality, but for me it's just not practical to worry about perfect quality all the time.

Most of the time I listen to music, it's on my mp3 player and I'm on the bus. Hardly ideal listening conditions, so why waste space on my mp3 player with anything higher than 192k or VBR.

Lossless formats sound nice, but I don't think they're worth the extra space. What bugs me is when people upload lossless soundtracks of SNES games or midi-based PS1 games.

Agreed. Above 320kbps, lossless or a hybrid like WavPack would be the best choice.

Use pure lossless if you don't mind bitrates of 640kbps+.

As for myself, I can tell the difference up to about 192kbps with some effort. Above that, I just can't.

Since I don't download music all that often, I go for the highest quality I can get. That way I can shrink it down if absolutely necessary for my MP3 player, and the quality is still tolerable.

I know that WAVs are technically lossless, so that's true. But I assumed that most of the "lossless" people were talking about was like FLAC or APE, in that it is lossless without being quite as large as WAVs.

My audio setup =
1 Mactontosh PowerBook with iTunes
1 iPod
1 Phillips 5-disc CD player
1 pair Sony purple earbuds

Tremble, ye mighty princes of speakery and headphonery! Thy master has arrived.

No. My audio setup is a $15 pair of Koss headphones from Walmart. I can tell the difference between a good recording and a bad one, but if you take the good recoding and encode it at 128 and 320, I'm not going to tell any difference.

The headphones are starting to die on me so it might be a good oppurtunity to get something a little better.

I've developed into an audiophile ever since I entered college; however, I'm not big on the lossless formats. I'm one to notice the difference between 320 kbps mp3s vs ... lower. Theres pretty much a fidelity factor with the various encodings.

As for hardware, I always just get whatever the best Logitech speakers are, so I've updraded 3 times during my time in college. As for headphones/earphones, I've had the Sennheiser HD-497s for a while. This year I recently acquired the $250 Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 pro earphones. I lost those things to death. I can hear only music when I put those things on. Take that crowded food court at student union. I can't hear you. You can't see me...

Yes PCM wav files are 'lossless' in quality, but lossless actually refers to the form of compression used (much like mp3s use lossy compression). A better term for wav, aiff and the like is uncompressed, like how PNGs are lossless and BMPs are uncompressed RGB pictures.
Of course even if lossless formats didn't compress at all, they'd still have a few advantages over wav files such as:
--Tag support (and Replaygain)
--Error detection/correction
--Streaming support (a few formats support this)
--More specific standards (WAV files can have Mp3, ADPCM, various speech codecs and even Sony's Atrac3 format contained in them, when most programs (outside of Windows at least) could only read standard PCM Waveforms)

Actually, some of those cheap Koss KSC series headphones are very musical. They aren't very detailed and don't have very good soundstaging, but they're really good for non-critical listening. If you can't find Sennheiser PX100s or AKG K26s locally, they're probably the best thing you can buy while sparing your wallet.

just don't buy new ones from wal-mart, since they're evil. o_o

I'm probably stuck somewhere in the middle. I can notice a quality difference between 128 and, say 320, and I rip all of my tunes at 320 now. I'm not going to shell out hundreds (thousands?!?) of dollars for some crazy audio equipment though (although I am looking at a pair of Technics headphones, but that's for my mixing...)

Sexy headphones

Double Post:
Yay level 2!

Dojomaster, there are MUCH better choices for far less. Heck, at $90-100, look at the Sennheiser HD-280. Very, very flat, detailed, cans. Some people don't like them for music listening compared to other cans in the price range (although I find them very nice), but for mixing they're stunning. Once again I reccomend looking around http://www.head-fi.com

Oh, and the Koss KSC-35 and KSC-75 (as well as the dicontinued PortaPro) are strunning phones for the price. As others have said, they're not the most detailed, but they're very enjoyable to listen to.

wow I'm surprised... the audiophiles actually outnumbered the non-audiophile ones. o.O I guess all of you must have super sharp ear. I really dont care too much about audio quality. My minimum would be 96 kbps. I don't like 320 kbps too much since my apacer mp3 player is too stupid to play 320 kbps.

I recently started to notice the difference between 128 and 192+ kilobits, then again, listening to stuff that go as low as 96 kilobits doesn't bother me. Anything lower than that does, though.

Don't know if I'd class as an audiophile but given the choice I'll always go for a higher bitrate or VBR file. That's even though I mainly listen to music in the car or on my MP3 player at the gym and probably couldn't tell the difference from a 128kbps file. It's just nice to know that the quality is there if I ever do want it.

The Koss phones took a while to adjust to. My Sony MDR-Q55SLs reached much better high notes, but they died recently.
Of course I'm once again able to tell the difference between lossless and 128kbps CBR (but not quite 192 or 256kbps, since they are cheap headphones).

I usually take whatever audio format 128k+ because anything below it sounds like shit.

Yeah, but I don't do lossless, mostly because I don't have the space needed for it(I have over 3,000 mp3s of various bitrates), and because a lot of the extra sounds you get with lossless, you can't really hear with regular human hearing, even with good headphones. My rat might appreciate it, though. :P

I thought one was an audiophile if they liked/hoarded a lot of music, or simply had eclectic tastes.

Depends on the type of music. Ogg vorbis streams I've listened to at ~80kbps sound acceptable, almost as much as -V 5 mp3s, that's because newer lossy codecs such as AAC and Vorbis emphasize lower bitrates moreso than LAME development has so far. It seems rock lends itself well to higher bitrates more thn most other genres of music.

I'm an audiophile. I don't go the way of lossless though. I usually stick to at least music in 192 CBR or above, or APS VBR or above. I've got a high quality soundcard and speaker system so imperfections in lower bitrates really make themselves known.

I am an audiophile to the point of owning Sound Forge 7.0, looping, crossfading, editing, etc.ing music and sound files, and going to Video Symphony in Burbank to study professional audio / sound editing to work in movie / music businesses.

As for sound quality..... really, anything over 160 is pointless. That's CD quality and unless you are trying to listen for a difference, you probably won't hear one (and even then most people won't hear one, only people with really sensitive, tuned ears will). At a certain point the human ear can't even hear it. This variable bitrate crap is a waste of space on the hard drive.

I can hear mp3 artifacting from a mile away. I mean, you really can't miss it. Nothing below 256kbps is acceptable. Personally, I use MPC for all of my music.

Like PiccoloNamek, I can hear all kinds of artifacts up until the -V 1 range (+224kbps VBR mp3.) Though only when I'm using my headphones =p. Its kind of like the one Arainach mentioned, except imagine the detailed flats with a more upfront sound. Its a shame the HD-595 costs so much or else I would recommend it to all my non-audiophile friends :(.

I would like to use a lossless source like flac or ape; but taking up over 3 times the space of a mp3 just can't be justified. But I do make exceptions here and there.