In the "Recommended lame settings" it says that the fast modes are "faster but potentially lower quality".

In what way do the fast modes work differently (apart from the speed ) and what kind of quality loss do I have to expect?


Thanks!

johnb

You're not to expect any audible difference at all really, if you do then please provide sample.
I've heard of no report claiming the difference yielding in audible differences in the fast and default commandline.

I encoded a somewhat simple song with --alt-preset fast standard and extreme, and --alt-preset standard and extreme

--alt-preset extreme - 220k
--alt-preset standard - 192k
--alt-preset fast extreme - 189k
--alt-preset fast standard - 180k

Quite a difference. It's too simple a track to look for audible differences, I just grabbed it since it's the only short WAV on my machine at the moment to see the bitrate differences.

I'm going to try a few tough to encode samples now, although all of my tougher samples musicwise are transparent at a higher bitrate. This has me curious. Results later.