I want the latest version of the FHG encoder. Also i want to be able to use various settings like LAME allows you to do , like changing the mode to stereo, and high quality encoding. I have the music match jukebox Version 8.0, but it doesnt allow me to change the quality settings of the encoded files, and always encodes in joint stereo. Is there any other software that uses the latest version of the FHG encoding engine , and lets me choose the settings for encoding?

And also is there a difference in the quality of FHG as compared to LAME encoders? I read on www.mp3dev.org that the quality of LAME is almost comparable to FHG and not better.

What are the commercial softwares avaialble that would allow me to select my own custom settings for encoding?

Thanks for any replies given.

the fact that it by default uses Join Stereo is a good thing, since that is the best way to encode mp3 files.

When talking about VBR, Lame is the king of the hill (of MP3 encoders). You do use VBR, dont you?

This section of the FAQ should answer most of your questions.

For more details on FhG vs. LAME quality variances, and for FhG encoding options, try a forum search. Many aspects of these subjects have been discussed many times here.

Edit: Here is a detailed MP3 encoder comparison. Here are the sound quality comparisons. Here is the results table. For details about joint stereo vs. full stereo, read the FAQ section linked above under the sub-section "Why is joint stereo better than pure stereo?"

fhg still sounds better. did some comparison tests on some old orchestral records. theres really no comparison at all. the string sections were ruined by lame. where on fhg you could pick out individual players and locations, lame leaves you with a stringy mess. also, everything just sounds more 'alive' and reverb sounds real, instead of crappy. do the comparisons yourself, i know this has been debated a thousand times and wont die until we all switch to ape, but theres really no comparison between lame and fraunhofer. i think the reason nobody notices is 1) theyre listening to music thats been compressed to f*ck and basically prepared for radio consumption (which drops everything above 16khz and reduces the dynamics to nil) and/or are listening on crappy speakers. get out a record made before 1980 or so. rip it at 24/96, dither down to 16/44 and encode in lame --alt-preset extreme (192 cbr is even worse), and then with the latest fhg at 192 cbr joint stereo and hear the difference for yourself. i'll never use LAME...

amol, what i use is Wavelab 4.0 with the fraunhofer addon (they broke it off into an additional $10 license, to cover their licensing costs), you do get what you pay for though, and are enabled full control as you would be with lame...various vbr settings, cbr, joint or dual, etc.

The sound of Fhg versus Lame won't be discussed further until you've taken notice of my answer to your other post (that I saw first) and went into blind listening tests, in accordance with the forum rules.

All discussions of this kind must first start on the basis of blind listening tests. This is the rule here. Thank you for following it.

Carmen you can write things like that in other forums but in this your're sort of on thin ice. By comparisons you mean blind tests?

I might agree that FhG sounds better for some type of music (strings), but around 192kbits/s I think most agree that LAME is superior, atleast comparisons has shown it.

FhG (Pro, fast etc) is by all means not a bad codec, best <128kbit/s for mp3.

I'm closing this topic in parallel to that one : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=14469& because the discussion about Fhg started by Carmen is not done in accordance with the forum rules.
I'm sorry about this, Amol, but you should duplicate your original question in a new thread in order to allow other people to answer you.