I love LAME more than audio itself but I have yet to see any other different compiles like Xing or FHG come close in quality. Why can't they ever get better on their strategies to compress and make it sound same or better than LAME compression? I have just been dying to see fighters come close in competition!!! Can any one answer this or is it a retoricle question of nonsense??? I AM CONFUSED!!!

Xing and FhG don't need to compete...
Most people think that FhG@160kbps CBR is transparent,
while many other just use 320kbps CBR.

Additionally, both these companies sell licenses for use of their products in audio software.

LAME is for people which don't like to waste space (e.g. for portables)
or who don't find other codecs quality enough for their needs.

Xing is hella-fast too, so that's what most people care about and notice.

History people, History... Xing disappeared, was absorbed by Real... FHG went to work with AAC, Thompson has the mp3 format now, and they made mp3pro. So no, don't expect much more from this format. There is real pressure coming from other formats, like AAC, Ogg Vorbis, etc against MP3. Sorry but i think you came like 5 years late to see any real competition taking place, and the format is almost nearing full optimization. There can't be any major improvements in quality because of the limits the format itself imposes, another reason why there is not much sense for the mentioned companies to keep working too much with it.

However your comment would be just perfect for Ogg Vorbis, despite the format being complete, there is only a single encoder which is not getting tweaked or improved enough, and no alternatives... But at least the format has lots of room for improvement, and things with AAC are heating (many encoders there ) I think you just need to dump this old legacy format, or be happy with lame APS.

Well, you can see people recommending FhG encoder for flash-based portables (i.e. low bitrates) in this forum

-Eugene

It's because of Intensity Stereo, which LAME doesn't use - probably because it's patented.
This can save much quality (except stereo separation) at lower bitrates.

/EDIT\ Some people don't like it (me included)
and LAME has already high quality even at low bitrates. \EDIT/

IIRC Intensity Stereo was left out from LAME because needed too much tweaking / tuning for the previous releases and the implementations were poor,but I don't think it is patented.

LAME 4 will have IS, according to the words of Takehiro Tominaga

bye

I think it's because FhG codec is tuned for these bitrates, while LAME is tuned for higher bitrates and transparency

-Eugene

No, LAME isn't tuned for transparency. /EDIT\ MusePack is. \EDIT/
It is tuned for quality at any bitrate - and it does its job well.