I was suspicious of -q0 in Lame 3.96 when using the alt presets. Namely I was interested in finding the best way to encode 128kbps MP3 with a minimum of distortion (I don't have the best ears ever, but I've become sensitive to certain distortions induced by MP3 encoding).
I imagine this is flamebait, but I decided on the setting --alt-preset cbr 128 --lowpass 15.5. I tested this against --alt-preset cbr 128 --lowpass 15.5 -q0. I used Lame 3.96 from the commandline.
I used PC ABX to compare.
-q0 vs original wav, 16 tries — result: 16/16, probability i was guessing, 0.05%
preset vs original wav, 16 tries — result: 8/16, probability i was guessing, 97.5%
Can somebody verify this? If so, please direct me to where I can upload the samples.
I wonder why is this so... ? Is this due to my manipulation of the preset?