Re: [LAU] What is the best MP3 encoder?

LAME isn't just the best thing in the Linux audio world, it's about the best MP3 encoder out there, full-stop; there's no way you're going to get a better-sounding MP3. Even if you can hear differences, it's incredibly unlikely that anyone else, who doesn't have your familiarity with the source material, is going to be able to hear any. In fact, I'd honestly be surprised if you really are hearing a difference, or hearing the differences you think you're hearing. Doing a proper ABX test, using a tool like Squishyball, could be very instructive here -- you might find that you have a lot more trouble picking the difference between the MP3 and the WAV than you think you would. If you do want to do an ABX test, use LAME to decode the MP3 back to WAV, and then supply that WAV to Squishyball, along with the original WAV from before you encoded it: lame --decode foo.mp3 foo.wav The MP3 format adds a delay to the start of files during the encoding process, and using LAME to decode it in this way will eliminate that delay on decoding (assuming the original file was encoded with LAME, too). If you don't eliminate that delay, then the results of the test would be invalid, since you might end up noticing the delay, rather than any real differences between the files. In fact, I'd recommend this to anyone who's never done it before -- modern encoders are remarkable things, and there's no better way of demonstrating this than with an ABX test. Thanks Leigh