My listening tests shows that ogg@q6 sounds good to me, mpc standard as well, I'am not 2 happy about psytel-aac speed wise.

basically i would need 3 types of bit rates:

- acceptable one, something a little better than typical 128kbps mp3 stuff (aac?)
- good one, i guess something around average 160 (mpc standard?),
- and a 'transparent' one, but not brain dead type (<265)

also it would be nice (but not essential) to have 'encoder/decoder/taging utility' available on unix platform (irix) plus some sort of scaling or clipping prevention in the codec itself.

i wonder if one codec could cover all 3, or the codecs are especially well tuned for just some of the desired bit rates.

and yes i did some reading already

MPC -standard is already very often transparent. You might think otherwise though with many people suggesting to use command lines such as --xtreme --tmn 32 --nmt 16, but these suggestions are not based on blind listening tests, instead only on wanting some sort of insurance.

MPC -standard should work fine here. If for some reason it doesn't (and you can verify it with blind listening tests), then chances are that --xtreme will work instead.

Ogg will do very well at your first two bitrates (probably with just -q 4 and -q 5), but you get diminishing returns past -q 6. MPC is apparently the king of transparency for the high-bitrates. LAME is compatibility king, and has '--alt-preset standard' which would fall between your second and third rates.

Ogg is the better supported on UNIX, then LAME, then MPC (open decoder, closed encoder). All can produce stuff transparent to 99.9% of the entire world

- so for 128 i could use ogg q4
- for 160 either ogg q5 or q6 or mpc standard (will do some tests here)
- for 'transparency' either mpc standard or extreme

tnx for fast replys :listening