It's been a number of years since I compared, but I ended up doing rips at 320 VBR (or CBR -- I'm forgetting, at the moment) with the setting that allows bandwidth to fluctuate to whichever of the stereo channels momentarily has a greater, calculated need ("stereo" or "joint stereo").
Yes, the difference was noticeable, on a well-regarded iAudio player using decent can headphones. At 320, I was finally, really happy with the resulting rips. Though I'd still archive in a lossless format.
Comments
It's been a number of years since I compared, but I ended up doing rips at 320 VBR (or CBR -- I'm forgetting, at the moment) with the setting that allows bandwidth to fluctuate to whichever of the stereo channels momentarily has a greater, calculated need ("stereo" or "joint stereo").
Yes, the difference was noticeable, on a well-regarded iAudio player using decent can headphones. At 320, I was finally, really happy with the resulting rips. Though I'd still archive in a lossless format.