What does your bit rate say about you?

By Nate Lanxon on 24 May 2007

All the music on your MP3 player is encoded at a certain bit rate, which determines both the audio quality and how much space it takes up. What does your preferred bit rate say about you?

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Comments (21)

  • Anonymous commented on 24/06/2009 16:52 Report abuse

    I rip CD's in lossless and I download in 320kbps, however I don't own a personal CD collection because I prefer vinyl.

  • Bass Man commented on 24/04/2009 04:15 Report abuse

    You couldn't be more wrong. To the unknowning reader, this article appears to be written by an expert; however far from it! Don't let this idiot fool or define you. I was born in 1977. So, you're immediately worng there, chump. And, I don't need to spend that much on a good laptop. That's what stupid people (like this autor) would think. And, I don't own a MAC, I'm not a self-righteous douche bag.

  • saintsaetia commented on 23/06/2008 13:59 Report abuse

    haha this is complete bullshit. i fit all your "requirements" for 320kbps but most of my music is at 128-192. suck it

  • Peter G commented on 05/10/2007 12:17 Report abuse

    Hmmm... I would have thought real audiophiles wouldn't listen to compressed music at all... The types of people that only buy European brands, have spikes on their speakers and probably have a valve amplifier, or want one.

    Still, since I'm only listening to my music from an iPod and some Sennheiser earphones, I'll be quite content sitting in the 128kbps group... 320 if I'm feeling luxurious.

    Oh, and people who can afford expensive audio equipment are probably driving around in an expensive car, instead of catching the train.

    It's only one person's opinion people, don't forget that

  • HungryJonas commented on 03/09/2007 15:23 Report abuse

    What a massive load of dayglo bs, this is yet another one of those "I'll make up a whole bunch of stuff, and just so long as I maintain a reasonable degree of proper spelling and punctuation I should be able to wow a bunch of people with my smoke and mirrors act - facts be damned!" type articles that so litter the net these days. Where's your evidence to back up any of this conjecture? In fact where is anything at all to support anything you write here? Yeah, that's what I thought. I look forward to your next 'cutting edge' article "what the colour of your socks says about your sex life"...

  • User_from_UA commented on 29/08/2007 23:50 Report abuse

    Ha-ha... what a simple tag sticking... I don't have a laptop at all, but thanks to NNM.ru and Rapidshare i got used to only 320 kbps and higher:) And to watch HDTV rips I use my one and only PC with awesome 22" CRT. For me HD DVD and BluRay are just a way to pack 3-5 DVDs into one:) No need to buy expesive licenses, warez rulez!

  • Mr Ed commented on 13/08/2007 13:52 Report abuse

    Actually, there are only 2 types - those who can tolerate the seriously foul sound of MP3 encoding, and the wiser people who use Sony's infinitely superior ATRAC3 compression. If you have not heard the difference you will not understand this point. ATRAC3 at 64Kb compression produces tiny files with incredible sound clarity and dynamics - far superior to MP3 at 320k!

  • timbo commented on 04/08/2007 23:23 Report abuse

    yeh that crystal ball must a been a bit cloudy cause i dont really fall into any of the catogries.... mainly because im a poor student i have a computer with a 10 gig hard drive. a 20 gig creative zen touch that is overflowed. and slow dial up so i am always looking to download my music at 128kbps.... hopefully all this will all change soon when i purchase a new comp and get adsl2 and a 80gig ipod or something similar... im hoping to stick with creative cause ive had mine for 3yrs and its always been pretty good to me and the battery is still going pretty strong(ive been through about 4 sets of earphones and am currently usin some sennhieser mx-51s theyr pretty good for cheap) .... but if i had the chance id want atleast 256kbps for reasonable audio quality... also soulseek treats me pretty well with heaps of good quality music downloads at a reasonable price on my budget

  • baumaxx1 commented on 06/07/2007 12:03 Report abuse

    Lol, how true... But I don't fit in any of those...
    Where's the 1.4 Mbps club?
    "You thrive on high-quality music and you actively listen out for the tell-tale signs of high bit rates"
    Yes
    "You own a fifth-gen video iPod"
    No way! Zen Vision: M
    "You don't buy music from iTunes because you are aware of how low quality the music is."
    Yes
    "You are most likely to be born before 1978"
    No
    "You are the most likely group to be a Mac user "
    Nah... The suck for gaming.
    "your headphones cost in excess of AU$150, possibly made by Shure, Sennheiser or Ultimate Ears. "
    Sonys, but I want to get newer Sennheisers.
    "and an HDTV"
    Pioneer Plasma
    "Your laptop cost at least AU$2,500"
    Laptops suck for gaming. My PC cost at least $2500 when new... not to mention the upgrades
    "and you consider yourself a cinema fan."
    Prefer gaming.
    "own at least one book about either quantum mechanics, "
    lol! Yeah...
    "Your mobile phone bill is considerably higher than average"
    Nope
    "you may work in the technology industry."
    =-)
    "You're depressed when you see people on the train using their MP3 player's bundled headphones "
    Especially if they have 20 free Gb on their mp3 player.
    "You use Limewire or BitTorrent to occasionally sample an album, but you always buy the CD if you like what you hear."
    True

    So that means I'm a freak right?

  • pgpete commented on 11/06/2007 11:51 Report abuse

    yes, but what about me, I still have cassettes kicking around ..... :)

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