Optimum bitrate?

[Jackstock]

I find it very hard to tell the difference of bitrate when I'm listening. I have only noticed it when I picked up a set of Sennheiser HD 650 headphones for editing my tracks.
I noticed one hypnotherapy recording company using a bitrate of 56 kbps and the low-quality bothered me a bit. I want to keep my bitrate as low as possible so everyone gets the best download speed and ease of storage. Most of my files are 128 kbps but I am finding that 96 kbps seems to work fine.
Can you tell the difference? Do you care?

[wohermiston]

I record the voice track on an Edirol R-09 at 64KBPS. Run that into audacity and add features. Then I play the audacity file - in analog - back onto the Edirol and upload the Edirol MP3 to WMM. This produces a very efficient file size and the fidelity is fine. WOH

[lauraparidae]

I guess download sizes might matter somewhere in the world, but can't you just wait until you have WiFi, if you live somewhere where mobile bandwidth is expensive?

I think it's better if the file is high quality and a bit too big, because you can always transcode it to a lower quality file, but if the original file is of low quality, you can't fix that.

Having said that, I noticed that my upload was at a relatively low bit rate (under 64kbps). Let me explain that though... I used a variable bitrate setting in ffmpeg and set the quality to 3. The Best quality setting would have been 1 and the lowest is something like 64? So I was trying to make a high quality file. Now that this thread made me notice, I changed my script and set the bit rate at 128kbps. Should I update my file here?

[Jackstock]

[quote]I guess download sizes might matter somewhere in the world, but can't you just wait until you have WiFi, if you live somewhere where mobile bandwidth is expensive?[/quote]
Many parts of united states have really low download speeds and poor connections. Also, many users are using their phones exclusively now, and they don't have much free space.
Also, a 60 minute MP3 at 320kbps can be around 140 Mb, which is a fair amount of space on a phone.
[quote] I changed my script and set the bit rate at 128kbps. Should I update my file here?[/quote]
I don't think anyone would hear the difference

[JackDrago]

Depends on your production. I have lots of subliminals and binaural, neither of which survive at 96kbps.

If your project is plain voice or voice with music you should be fine at any bitrate that sounds good. If you want to preserve subliminals at -32db then maximum file size is required.

[sarnoga]

I agree with Jack.

Regards,

Sarnoga

[sarnoga]

I now see that both previous posts were by someone named Jack. In the interest of clarity I should have said, I agree with JackDrago