Started to convert my music collection to 320kb/s MP3s, because my current setup and ears are too good for 128kb/s MP3 or worse 32kb/s WMA from times, when I didn't have enough HDD capacity and bandwidth. Good news, I'm enjoying some albums once again. Bad news, other albums were awfully mastered in the first place (like horrible bass on the Wishsides collection by Nightwish).
Oooof. That's just brutal. I've got a song that's probably around 32kbps because it was so long that it had to be ****ty to keep the file size reasonable. It's quite unfortunate...
Glad to hear you're upgrading though, the jump to 320 is fairly significant.
Actually, if you can use only something like laptop built-in speakers or an old $10 headset, 32kb/s WMA is barely distinguishable from 128 kb/s MP3—and the file size is smaller by a huge margin. I made these in times, when I had only a 40GB HDD... now, my whole collection takes like 80 GB of space in the middle of conversion to 320kb/s MP3.
Speaking of that, I'd have to get a new storage, if I wanted to go lossless, but the difference in music enjoyment would be negligible; certain aspects of modern mastering are often a much bigger issue that can't be easily fixed.
If I wanted to go full audiophile, I'd start a vinyl collection. I'll probably raid that great local thrift store with rare rock LPs anyway.