What Bitrate is best for MP3 files?

The MPEG-1 Layer 3 standard, allows for the following bitrates:

32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 144, 160, 192, 224, 256 and 320 kbit/s

Generally speaking, for music, anything less than 128 kbit/s, will not sound very good to the average human ear. For good sounding playback, we recommend 160 or better.

Many of the files you will find on illegal peer-to-peer file sharing networks, will be at the 128 kbit/s rate (and usually tagged improperly) -- another good reason to stay away from those sites.

Due to the low costs of storage space these days, it is recommend you encode (rip) your files to 256 kbit/s or higher, and use CBR (Constant Bit Rate) encoding. CBR makes it easier for the player to decode the song while it is playing, thus reducing the overhead on the CPU and software. VBR (Variable Bit Rate), sometimes sounds slightly better, but cannot be played on all software and players, and uses more overhead during playback. They also make it harder to seek to a certain point in the file, which makes VBR not a good choice for Computer DJs who are into scratching. They do work fine for regular playback though (albeit the slightly higher resource usage).