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While there is no official page for the tuned presets, the particular fellows who do the bulk of the work reside in the Hydrogen Audio forums. In general, Hydrogen Audio is the best audio encoding site on the Internet. A Google search may provide some useful information, but, alas, Hydrogen Audio is not Google indexable.

`lame --alt-preset help` will provide some usage information unless you use CVS, in which case the settings have been merged into the original --preset switch.

However, most "audiophiles" are not convinced by documents anyway, so the recommended method in testing the alt presets versus r3mix is to learn a bit about audio encoding, artifacts, and double blind testing (ABX). r3mix has publicly stated that he does not believe in ABXing, a scientifically sound method, so r3mix's tweaks are based on flawed techniques.

Most people who have compared it to other codecs, including MP3 and Ogg, claim it is superior. You can read some of the discussions at Hydrogen Audio in the MPC forums.

I understand MPC, unlike Ogg, may be encumbered by some patents (as is MP3), but for a pure quality comparison, it should be included. Does anyone know why/if it was omitted from this comparison?

"Especially at 64kbps Ogg Vorbis won over convincingly, and left the competition behind. From 128kbit/s, the noticeable difference between the formats became significantly lower, such that WMA, RealAudio, MP3Pro and also MP3, to most ears, was difficult to differentiate."

It all depends on how good your ears are trained.

I've been a self-proclaimed 'psychoacoustic audiophile' for awhile, and I have learned tons from fellow people at HA and other great sites. If trained to hear such differences as preecho and other things, OGG *greatly* increases in quality over many many other formats, including MP3, at almost every bitrate or quality setting. Hell, WMA just raises decibles to "sound" better (uhm, near-origional reproducability anyone?)

Run some of your own tests, do some ABX'ing, and then report in. Don't trust these, and don't trust others' ears over yours, ever.

Perhaps the best site ever for psychoacoustic recording:
Hydrogen Audio

c't is a good computer magazine, but it's not an professional audio magazine.
If you want to learn about audio encoding, listening tests and so on, visit audio-illumination.org and ff123.net

A discussion about heise's listening test can be found here.

c't is a good computer magazine, but it's not an professional audio magazine.
If you want to learn about audio encoding, listening tests and so on, visit audio-illumination.org and ff123.net

A discussion about heise's listening test can be found here.

Free ones are not affected. Thompson has said many times before free decoders will not be charged.

Post at Hydrogen Audio about this