Newbie encoding question about bitrates?

[jakobkraft]

I have a space crisis, on both my PC and mp3 player, and was looking to reencode approximately 600 tracks from 320kbps to 96kbps. Did a test run of about 30 and although I could hear a difference (especially classical with a lot of instruments going at once) it didn't seem like a huge one and was certainly tolerable - but while I'm familiar with the fact of lower bitrate, lower quality, I don't know what the second number means as in:

128kbps, ??44khz??

When re-encoding, should that second number be higher or lower? Thanks in advance...

 

[DaveSimmons]

44 KHz = standard for normal frequency response, leave it alone. Lowering this means cutting off all high-frequency sound in your songs.

 

[jakobkraft]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
44 KHz = standard for normal frequency response, leave it alone. Lowering this means cutting off all high-frequency sound in your songs.

Got it, thanks