At first I did all my mp3's at 160cbr (I thought it was a good balance between quality and space). But after finding out how easy it is to upgrade the drive space, and noticing on a handful of mp3's a lack of detail, I am now re-encoding all of my collection to 192cbr. Part of me wishes that I had gone with VBR, but I use MusicMatch and their VBR option is kind of weak. So, I only do CBR because I don't want to give up the convienient features of MusicMatch.

So, coming from someone who has done 160 and 192CBR, if you are not stuck any particual software yet, I'd say go with VBR. Drive space is too cheap to worry about file size. My time is more valuable and I'd almost consider my mp3 collection to be "archive" quality and I've sold a few CD's I never listend to anymore but felt guilty getting rid of until I had it on mp3.

I initially hated MusicMatch when I only used it as a Jukebox because I felt it hijacked my PC, so I stuck with Winamp until the day came that I ordered my empeg.