a classical music and mp3 issue? Options

[twlkwind]

Is it true that classical music lose more details after encoded with lame or other encoder like mppenc?

[Dibrom]

I've been pushing the mpc format on my forum since i know it's better audio quality and faster encoding speed.

OK, but have you heard it for yourself? For example there is one user here who even can't find any adequat words in his own language to describe how bad MPC sounds to him with his favorite harpsichord music at low bitrates.

Hrmm.. but how relevant is this? As far as I can tell, the original poster isn't talking about low bitrates. Furthermore, who is using MPC at low bitrates? It isn't designed for low bitrates, it isn't tuned for low bitrates, and it's not recommended for low bitrates by the developers who have worked on it. Saying that it may not be good at low bitrates (on harpsichord music or not) doesn't really mean much in this context.

There is only one thing i want to know:
Is there any relation between music style and compression format? You know different music has different behavior. So is it your opinion that we can encode POP and Classical and Jazz and all the other music using Lame's standard switch(alt-presets) in order to get the transparent audio quality? The well-known critical songs shouldn't be included of cource.

As you can see from the above example, you really can't generalize that much, although almost everyone here seems to like it that way.

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The most important thing is that you should not trust anything someone tells you (especially me), but rather test it for yourself before making generalizing comments.

I do certainly agree with the idea of listening on your own before drawing conclusions, but at the same time I think that it is safe to make certain assumptions about overall performance of an encoder in various situations based on past listening tests and other data available on the forums here. Of course, anything goes on a case by case situation and one should always verify results if they need a precise judgement of quality, but it is also well known (through continuous testing and verification) that certain encoders perform well in certain areas. I don't think there is necessarily a need to disregard all public knowledge, but only to be wise in your application of such.