Radium FhG Professional vs Lame ?

[alegro]

What is the best program (encoder) for making MP3's and why:
Radium Fraunhofer Professional or Lame ???
And which is the best setting: Stereo or Joint Stereo ?
Your opinion please...

[shaneg]

LAME is better because it's updated - the Radium (hacked) codec is pretty old now and was based on the old professional Fraunhoffer version.

LAME 3.92 (exe, dll, CDex and winLame versions) is great for making MP3's.

As for JS/S, the general rule is to use JS for bitrates up to 160kBit/s then S after that. If you are encoding music that uses both stereo channels alot (classical or something), you should always use stereo.

Hope this helps

[Fox Mulder]

There is no need to use simple stereo anymore with LAME and the --alt-presets, even with high bitrates. The join stereo mode switchs dinamically at a frame level during encoding, and is not flawed like in other encoders.
Check here about Dibrom's opinion on this; the guy who implemented the code-level tweaks and the --alt-presets in LAME:
http://w*ww.audio-illumination.org/f...=15&t=1851&hl=

http://w*ww.audio-illumination.org/f...f=16&t=593&hl=

[CDrZeus]

discussion on the topic can also be found here:

http://www.r3mix.net/

Personally, I really rate Lame above all other MP3 encoders (I use it with the "RazorLame" front end). I have experienced occasional instability, although I am uncertain whether this is due to the Razor GUI, or Lame itself. Either way, it isn;t a problem because Lame resumes perfectly after a crash, without having to reimport source files. The encoded quality at 192kbps ABR is absolutely superb, even when played back on a very high quality hi-fi, from CDR.

CDrZeus.