Quality should be perfect with quality setting --standard.
It would be nice if you could try a higher quality setting than -q 0 if you have the time and feel like that.
Oh, at first I thought the -q setting works like Lame's -V that lower means better. I've just downloaded 1.0.1t and tried the --standard setting and I cannot ABX that, I get like 5/12.
In case you give 3.90.3 a try: it may be useful to test the older gpsycho model as well which was often said to have the better pre-echo behavior. You get a gpsycho result when using 3.90.3 -b 320 -h. It would be interesting to see how it compares to the nspsytune result of --preset insane.
Tried both 3.90.3 and 3.96.1 with CBR 320 (-b 320 -h) and 3.90.3 with --alt-preset insane (3.96.1 gives the same mp3 file as CBR 320). All is ABXable (I got 12/12 for all of them). Then I've tried ABR 320 for v3.96.1 but this time, maybe because I'm ill or because my ears are getting fatigue, I miss once but still got 14/15.
But is it possible for ABR to outperform (quality-wise) CBR at 320?
Here's the result for v3.96.1 ABR 320:
foo_abx 1.3.3 report
foobar2000 v0.9.5.3
2008/06/13 15:32:10
File A: F:\Music Projects\2006\Nitade 2006\_Final Audio\Enchanting! sample.wav
File B: F:\Music Projects\2006\Nitade 2006\_Final Audio\Enchanting! sample-lamev3.96.1-abr320.mp3
15:32:10 : Test started.
15:32:15 : 01/01 50.0%
15:32:18 : 02/02 25.0%
15:32:28 : 03/03 12.5%
15:32:50 : 04/04 6.3%
15:32:59 : 05/05 3.1%
15:33:07 : 06/06 1.6%
15:33:18 : 07/07 0.8%
15:33:21 : 07/08 3.5%
15:33:27 : 08/09 2.0%
15:33:30 : 09/10 1.1%
15:33:35 : 10/11 0.6%
15:33:40 : 11/12 0.3%
15:33:45 : 12/13 0.2%
15:33:49 : 13/14 0.1%
15:33:55 : 14/15 0.0%
15:34:01 : Test finished.
----------
Total: 14/15 (0.0%)
If you like to it would also be interesting to see how the Fraunhofer mp3 encoders are behaving. A FhG mp3 encoder is available for instance with WMP11, dBPoweramp, or as a free CLI surround encoder version which can be downloaded from All4mp3 (oh: I've just seen there is new version out if I remember well the version I downloaded recently).
But I'm afraid that with mp3 we have to accept the fact that quality can be restricted even with highest bitrate.
Fraunhofer is far worse. (I use dBPoweramp)
foo_abx 1.3.3 report
foobar2000 v0.9.5.3
2008/06/13 16:10:15
File A: F:\Music Projects\2006\Nitade 2006\_Final Audio\Enchanting! sample.wav
File B: F:\Music Projects\2006\Nitade 2006\_Final Audio\Enchanting! sample-FraunhoferIIS-320.mp3
16:10:15 : Test started.
16:10:21 : 01/01 50.0%
16:10:23 : 02/02 25.0%
16:10:26 : 03/03 12.5%
16:10:29 : 04/04 6.3%
16:10:31 : 05/05 3.1%
16:10:34 : 06/06 1.6%
16:10:36 : 07/07 0.8%
16:10:38 : 08/08 0.4%
16:10:40 : Test finished.
----------
Total: 8/8 (0.4%)
Oh, almost forget, even tried Freeformat at 550 with Lame v3.96.1. I've tried higher bitrate but the result cannot be decoded correctly, always get MAXFRAMESIZE not large enough. Anyway, foobar2000 doesn't support Freeformat so I have to get Lame to decode them first. It's still ABXable and I've got 11/12, here is the result:
foo_abx 1.3.3 report
foobar2000 v0.9.5.3
2008/06/13 15:55:49
File A: F:\Music Projects\2006\Nitade 2006\_Final Audio\Enchanting! sample.wav
File B: F:\Music Projects\2006\Nitade 2006\_Final Audio\Enchanting! sample-lamev3.96.1-freeformat550.mp3.wav
15:55:49 : Test started.
15:56:17 : 01/01 50.0%
15:56:28 : 02/02 25.0%
15:56:33 : 03/03 12.5%
15:56:54 : 04/04 6.3%
15:57:14 : 05/05 3.1%
15:57:32 : 06/06 1.6%
15:57:44 : 06/07 6.3%
15:57:57 : 07/08 3.5%
15:58:21 : 08/09 2.0%
15:58:40 : 09/10 1.1%
15:59:04 : 10/11 0.6%
15:59:22 : 11/12 0.3%
15:59:27 : Test finished.
----------
Total: 11/12 (0.3%)
So if it's even ABXable at 550, I think maybe this is a killer sample for Lame. Do you think Lame can be further tuned to handle these cases, or is this the limitation of MP3 format itself?