[paddington]

all good MP3 encoders are Lame... har har har



seriously, though... best MP3 encoder, when set right.. iTunes. Try doing some A/B comparissons... the 320 CBR / no narrowing / Normal stereo settings used in iTunes will produce a MUCH more pure MP3 file from lossless WAV than anything I;ve been able to get LAME to do.

they license and use the Fraunhofer encoder in iTunes and it is vastly superior, I have found in my testing.

have a look at the spectrum analysis betwwen several samples and you'll find a LOT more of the audio is left intact and what is removed is much less abrupt using the iTunes encoder licensed from Fraunhofer. In listening, the high-freq aliasing is much less pronounced, to me.