[vkvedam]

Well its more of placebo I would say. Normally during compression it removes the unnecessary information on either sides of the audio spectrum. Sometimes the mid-freq gets squashed where you would lose the certain subtleties in layers of music you listen to. For instance you wouldn't see any difference when you are listening to trance, dance & electronica. Even with rock if you don't have a huge setup you wouldn't see any difference. This is according to my observation so far. Even if it only pop you wouldn't see any difference. I have dumped my iPod with some lossless and still trying to analyse the exact variation you would get with rock genre. I am still not an audiophile, so its just my experience so far.

 

[majkel]

To the OP - the only person who can answer this question is you. Rip one ore more songs to different bitrates, upload them all to the player and make a listening session. Start from the highest bitrate, say 320kb/s, check if you lose anything at 256kb/s, then compare it to 192kb/s bitrate and when you realize you hear an obvious deterioration, choose the higher bitrate. For more convenience, you can rely on the 256kb/s as it would be VBR -V0, with the latter having lower bitrate, and actually you can go 320kb/s CBR, -V0 VBR, -V1, and so on. I can tell you that whatever lower than the 320kb/s CBR or ABR sounds incomplete to me, mainly in regards of midrange, something like vkvedam said. But on the go, it won't probably matter that much. And there is another thing - many players' hardware does not reach the quality level of the 320kb/s, not mentioning the lossless formats, so that's another reason why people don't distinguish above LAME -V0.

 

[Tipped_Pro95]

Quote:

Originally Posted by majkel /img/forum/go_quote.gif To the OP - the only person who can answer this question is you. Rip one ore more songs to different bitrates, upload them all to the player and make a listening session. Start from the highest bitrate, say 320kb/s, check if you lose anything at 256kb/s, then compare it to 192kb/s bitrate and when you realize you hear an obvious deterioration, choose the higher bitrate.

This is only way that you are gonna know. My money says that you will be fine.

 

[Guarneri]

To answer the OPs 2 main questions (from my experience):

1. Is 256k good enough for a set of SE530 and iPod touch.

The simple answer is yes, almost everyone can enjoy the music outputted by and iPod and SE530 at 256kb/s. Whether or not there are noticeable differences between 256kb/s and higher bit rates or lossless formats probably won't affect your listening pleasure.

2. Is the SE530 an overkill for 256kb/s?

No, you will hear much more difference between different earphones than different bit rates, especially in the 256kb/s or higher range. Bit rate, in general, (unless it's really low like sub 128kb/s) won't influence what earphones you like or dislike.

 

[sandino]

I always found the iPod touch to be a little flat sounding... Perhaps it's not the mp3 bitrate?

 

[burningskulls]

Hows the battery life on that touch with your files at 320kb