Pardon my ignorance, but what is VBR?

Variable Bit Rate. It's available with some encoders (such as Xing's).

MP3s are divided into frames, small sections of music representing about 0.026 seconds of audio data. Each frame is independent of the others. So somebody got the bright idea: If each frame is independent, why does the entire MP3 file have to be at the same bitrate?

VBR allows you to have "simple" frames (ones where the audio frequencies aren't complex) encoded at a low bitrate, while "complex" frames (such as those containing lots of overlapping high frequencies) could be encoded at higher bitrates. This results in a file that has a higher percieved quality than a fixed-bitrate file of the same size.

Oh, and I record my MP3s at 192. I know it might be a little overkill, but I am certain I can't tell the difference between it and CD quality. It still compresses to an acceptable level for me (around 7:1 as opposed to 10:1).

192kbps is certainly very high quality, and nearly impossible to distinguish from the original source (I know I can't tell the difference). But consider this: To me, a VBR file that compresses at around 9:1 or 10:1 sounds equally as good as that 7:1 fixed-bitrate file. You might want to check out some VBR encoders and see if they give you the results you want for a savings in file size. Depending on how much you want to spend on disk drives, you might need the savings.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144