320k,...240k,..160k,..150k....What best bit-rate for MP3?

[ausser]

Hi,
I just got my first new el cheapo MP3 player.
Damn frustrating trying to work the controls with guitarists nails - 'cept if your left handed..

So, I'm trying to decided a good bit-rate quality for the mp3 files.

I've tried to compare and to my ears 160k doesn't sound at all different to the max 320k bit-rate on my player.
Now ok, I'm not listening to this in the quietest environment - outside traffic etc...
Here's what I do.

I slot in a commercial CD - Dulce Pontes for example and in my Roxio dialogue, up comes a box with a slider on it asking me at what bit-rate I want to convert from .wav to mp3.
It can be anything from 320k to well very small..
So I opted for about 160k
Also did the same song at 320k
Loaded them into my new MP3 player - and I can hear no difference at all between the 2.

So - in your opinion what do you think? - what bitrate would you listen to music at on your MP3 player?

I just hope I don't decide to rip a whole lot of my albums to say 120K bitrate only to discover in the dead of night - without traffic - that theres a certain hiss high up in the background.
Or decide to rip at 320k - taking up way more space when it isn't really necessary.

My MP3 player also plays WMA windows media...
Is .wma a better option that MP3?
What do you rekon is the right way to go converting CDs to my new MP3 player?

Peace and Happy New Year.
Ausser.

PS:
MP3 Player is SanDisk Sansa m240 1 Gig = £14.99 in Currys.

[Voltan]

If you can't hear a difference - why waste your diskspace? use the lower bitrate
If you're using a good ripper & encoder (like EAC + LAME), most people won't notice any difference between 160k and higher. 128k might be a bigger quality drop. You might wanna try VBR (variable bitrate) too.

[Marc]

Without any scientific basis I find I prefer 192K.

Marc

[Timo]

160k would be fine for an mp3 player when you're on the move.

When I archive my CDs to hard-disk I choose between 192k and 256k or use FLAC (lossless), though. I listen to a lot of dance music and a lot of the lower MP3 bit-rates create a phase-y or annoying, trickly, aliased LFO-filter type effect on the hats and cymbals. Once you spot it you can't ignore it. I find you can pretty much tell between an MP3 and an original by listening to the cymbals and hats, it's a dead giveaway.

Use the LAME codec and one of the front-ends like RazorLAME. Encode the tunes using the highest quality encoding/algorithm setting ("0") as opposed to fastest setting - it'll take longer to convert, but the end file-size will still be the same but the sound will be of higher quality at the same bitrate (and thus file-size). Encoding times are becoming less and less of an issue with modern CPUs thesedays anways.

[XVampireX]

I might be biased, but you should try the format called OGG Vorbis, it's superior to MP3 and you can use 128k ogg just like you would use a 192k or even a little bit higher MP3

[Voltan]

but most portable players don't support ogg playback