Hey Borislav,

160kbps is probably too low a resolution for the level of equipment you hooked it up to. I have a set of 400W Klipsch speakers, not super high-end, but the little THX sticker leads me to believe they can reproduce audio to sufficient spec -- anyway, the minimum I use for my own encoding (never trust some punk on Napster to get it right when he's proof-listening on a $50 set of speakers) is 192kbps. Its not archival quality, but beyond 192kbps I can hear no difference from source to justify the extra space. 160kbps only seemed better than 128kbps on simple tracks.

Also (rummaging for the review) a recent review of different MP3 codecs/tools indicated that LAME was among the worst for lower-bitrate encoding, with Fraunhofer (used in AudioActive Studio) being the best. The codec that Xing's AudioCatalyst used was reviewed well also.

The tests were run with FBR files. I have never bothered with VBR files to qualitatively comment either.

I am sure that someone posted a link to the review a while back. Maybe its moot at this point, however.

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MK2 #141, green, 12GB