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Btw about encoders: IF you have the chance, esp. for lower bitrates check out 'mp3enc31' from Fraunhofer. It's insanely expensive but really good (and it clearly outperforms Lame and any other encoder I've ever tried).
That is questionable. Since some codecs sounds better on lower rates and ither on high rates.. etc...
Well, I haven't tested Lame recently, but a few years ago I've compared several MP3 encoders for my stream. And with Lame, I could hear artifacts at any bitrate (even 320 kbit/s). With mp3enc31 there were few artifacts even at 128 - although there's another issue which is that mp3enc crashes when it tries to encode frequencies above 16 kHz, so you have to cut the audio off there. Also the CPU load is a lot higher (at least 10 times as high as that of Lame).
Maybe also important to note is that there are also huge differences between MP3 *DE*coders! Especially avoid installing the MP3Pro plugin in Winamp, because everything else (normal MP3's that is) will sound bad if you do that.