[xkfow]

I am going overseas and am about to pack all my CD's away into storage for what will probably be several years.
 
I am planning to re-rip a bunch of my CD's at higher quality to ensure when I get around to getting even better headphones I am not annoyed at the sound quality.
 
I am wondering if I upgrade from a sub $200 pair of headphones to a $300 or $400 pair of headphones, am I going to be likely to be able to tell the difference between a 256 and 320kbs mp3 file? How about using variable bit rate?
 
Currently I rip all my stuff using fairly standard settings to the lame encoder at 192kbs.
 
While I am no "audiophile" I can certainly tell the difference between an mp3 encoded at 128kbs to one encoded at 192kbs, any higher than this I am not sure it makes a difference with the headphones I currently own.

 

[DaBomb77766]

V0 MP3!  That should be on your poll too.

 

[peskypesky]

when i did some ABX tests, i couldn't tell the difference between 320k, 256k and 192k. i couldn't believe it, but i could not reliably guess which was which.
 
but just to be safe, i still will encode at 320k for classical, and 256k for rock, jazz, etc.
 
BUT i was not listening with $300-400 headphones. i was using Grado SR80s and Sennheiser HD 555s.

 

[xkfow]

Hmm it appears that it is not possible to edit the poll. According to the site I found via google (below), V0 is roughly the equivalent to 245kbs which is the same as the lame "--preset extreme". Perhaps I should just stick with that. I have enough space issues on my iPhone as it is
 
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME