I encoded Hush ripped from Deep Purples Best Of CD (cant check out exactly which one right now) and when listening to the intro with the howling woolf sounds and noise I hear some artefacts.
I hear them during the reveberation of the howling and its quite annoying. I havent done any ABX tests since i dont have the original but im sure im hearing it.

If anybody is interessted i can upload a sample if this part.

What version of LAME have you tested?

Is the problem the same in Lame 3.90.3 as in 3.96? Please also post the sample.

Like I said I don't have the original, otherwise I would be able to do so. I won't be able to upload a sample until tomorrow. Is there any way of shortening a mp3 (without other loss) or should i decompress it and then compress it to flac?

A sample without a reference is useless.
Maybe somebody else can provide a lossless version.

Since I dont have a original I'll do the next best thing, describe what it sounds like. It's a 60s recodrding, brown noise with howling woolf thats getting reverbarated/echoed in a natural way.
The artefact occurs during the reverbaration from the howling and sounds like some sort of flanging sound.
I have several different albums encoded with lame 3.90.3 aps and this is the only artefact I have discoveverd through normal listening.

edit: I don't want to brake TOS #8 I'm just saying that this is the only artefact i have discovered with this encoder and switches that was that obvious and annoying to my ears.

I have the "deep purple - 30 : very best of" album. I just ripped it and cannot tell there's great noise. If you think it's the right version I'll upload a FLAC sample of the intro.

I think the one I had is mid 90s. its was not 30 and not Deepest Purple. They might have filtered out the noise in 30.

edit: Okay, the one I have is called Smoke on the water - the best of Deep Purple from 94.

edit 2: here's a link:
http://www.thehighwaystar.com/rosas/jouni/discos/comp26.html
otherwise I'll upload a sample tomorrow

I finally uploaded the file here: http://209.152.181.168/~hydrogen/index.php...ST&f=35&t=22151

Encoded with lame 3.90.3 with alt preset standard.
Decoded with foobar2000 diskwriter(uses mpglib?) and normalized to make artefact more obvious. Original around 20 dB quieter depends on if you replaygan or not.

I am aware that without an original lossless sample this might not be worth anything but perhaps the community would be interessed anyway.

Then both the mp3 and the FLAC will sound exactly the same i.e. no artifacts at all.

The issue was if I could split the mp3 without re-encoding it, to save bandwidth.

Maby this problem sample is solved in 3.96 anyway.

Of course you can split mp3s without re-encoding (well , at least according to various software developers claims...). There are plenty of tools, a lot of them are freeware.
Right now I remember about mp3DirectCut (very good compact app, grab this one if you can).I also remember about mp3trim.

I have the original.

Have just made 29 sec sample and done ABX testing between original and mp3 (LAME 3.96 --preset standard)

I'm not able to tell the difference between the two and I doubt if anybody else will be able to hear any significant differences either.

I would like to provide access to the flac sample, but I do not know where to place the flac file in order for others to access it.

Edit;
I have uploaded the sample here:
Deep Purple - Hush

There is an upload forum specifically for this purpose where you can attach the sample to a post.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/showforum/35

Thanks to Phong,

Here is the original sample:

Original sample