Hi.

I was compressing music to use as ringtones on my cell phone.

I was using ABR 40 (mono) and ABR 80 with great results, and when I put the -h switch (high quality), it took considerable more time to encode and the resulting files were slightly smaller.

Now, does this really work in low bitrates? Should it sound better? at least in theory, cuz I can't tell the difference.
I'm asking this because I presume that when using a --preset, I'll get the best possible result, so I shouldn't be changing things.


Right?

Well, you pretty much answered your question - the -h switch should make things sound better but you probably won't be able to tell the difference.
You can also try -q0 instead of -h.

Didn't -q0 reportedly increase artifacts?

AFAIK not in the newest version of LAME, there was a bug in previous versions but it was fixed.

Thank you for your time and help.

Bye.