I usually record music from a satellite jazz radio.

Till now, I was using: 3.93.1 VBR 2 new Joint-Stereo
- with "modern rich" music, I got 160-185 kbp/s mp3 files
- with "old poor" music, as low as 100 kbp/s.
This is very satisfying, with mp3 files from about 100kbp/s to 185kbp/s automatically, depending on music contents.

Last week I switched to: 3.96.1 VBR 3 new Joint-Stereo
All is ok with bit-rate of "modern rich" music.
But with "old" records - say: Art Tatum or Django Reinhardt 1940 mono - I got mp3 files with the lowest bit rate around 150 kbp/s, which seems to be too high for such a music...

Is there 3.96.1 JS VBR setting, able to get same results as the 3.93.1, which is very fine ?

what is "new joint stereo"? Do you mean --vbr-new (which hasn't nothing to do with joint stereo, but which increase bitrate on noisy tracks)?

Thanks for answer.

I use MP3directcut for recording, with the following Lame settings:
Joint-Stereo
VBR quality 2 with 3.93.1 or 3 with 3.96.1
VBR 'new' method

lame 3.97alpha7 solves this issue with --vbr-new. You should try it.

Thanks for the hint, so I tried lame 3.97 dated 2005.02.28

I used CDex audio extraction from an 'old poor' mono record.
In all cases, the settings were:
- Joint-stereo
- VBR 'new' method

The resulting bit-rates are:

3.93.1 VBR 2 = 112 kbp/s
3.96.1 VBR 3 = 157 kbp/s !!!!
3.97 VBR 2 = 100 kbp/s
3.97 VBR 3 = 95 kbp/s

So, you were right, with 3.97 the "too high bit-rate" as disappeared, and it seems better than the 3.93.1 for this kind of music.
I'm unable to hear any difference with these 4 mp3 files.

Thanks again.

you don't have to specify joint-stereo, the presets all use it by default.