I have been told numerous times that LAME would be much better in terms of sound quality than Xing's encoder, even though Xing is much faster. I cannot hear a big difference with my simple ears, but I didn't really compare seriously yet.

Me too. I can't hear a difference between the Xing encoder at a high VBR rate and LAME at a similar rate. Nonetheless, I've been using LAME lately as everyone keeps slamming Xing. Bowing to peer pressure, I suppose.

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Tony Fabris