Encoding, Lame 3.90...

[lore]

Maybe a lot of people asked it, anyway...
I read a lot of tutorials about mp3 ecc, most of them claims that Lame 3.90 is incredible, there are thousand list of setting that should be amazing for encoding...so, I tryied a lot of them but still I'm not satisfied. When I listen the encoded file...bah seems not so good as if encoded with Fraunhofer. I even asked a friend to play randomly the two version of many different song and I almost always guessed the right encoder without headphones
I'm a musician but not an audiophile...though always hear some imperfections in the files encoded with Lame

Usually I encode @ 128, stereo, CBR with fraunhofer and it rocks! Not cd quality as everyone claims but really rocks, so I ask you what settings to get the best from Lame @ 128 and make me forget Fraunhofer?
Thanx

P.S. It seems Lame hates Led Zeppelin albums, found big quality difference with them...

[xbenchman]

i use to be a tru blue fraun man myself
i use the cdex v 1.40 final and it came loaded with lame 3.92 alpha 1...i am a convert
i use to think fraun was the only way to go but after playing with the new lame i was impressed.
ears have a lot to do with it..mine are not so good and the only musical talent i have is putting in a cd and pressing play
i have no talent but that does not mean i don't know what i like and i like the lame 3.92 alpha 1
i have played with the settings and found that just plain 128 constant bit encoding is my favorite
you can try playing with the new version...lame is being fine tuned almost every day...fraun has been the same for several years
the final outcome is what is "music to your ears"
hope this is helpful--if not sorry

[lore]

I'll give a try to 3.92 alpha 1 too, I like Lame project very much that's why I want to learn how to use it at its very best, I think this kind of free projects MUST be supported...
Poko right now I don't remember what that setting is for, I'll give
a look at the manual for spec...I would appreciate any other suggestion so, happy Lame users, c'mon ! Please post the whole line of parameters you pass to the encoder, copy/paste in razor is sooo easy
Thanks a lot

[N.B.]

Personally I use LAME as well ..
Especially since the easy switches are built in, it is really fun to play around with it ...

Yeah, so far, VBR is surely the way to go, although on my system the Windows Media Player is then TOO stupid to calulate the playtime correctly ...
But with WinAMP it is really nice

The "--alt-preset standard is the one I use very often. VBR with average stream of 192 kbit ..
The quality is really fine ..
On some files I use LPAC, this is a lossless encoder, which cuts down the filesize to 2/3 ....

[lore]

VBR..eh...must ensure my Kenwood Mp3 car player can handle it
Keep posting, I'm open to any suggestion