I recently got myself a PDA phone and I transcoded a couple of MP3's into smaller MP3's at lower bitrates. I do not have a distinguishing ear (thus would be useless for testing MP3 quality), but as I loaded the music into a 2GB storage card, I began to wonder which format gives the best quality for file size? While I have a 2GB storage card, that card is filled with other things and I want to maximize space. I transcoded my MP3's to approximately 128kps which didn't sound bad to me. In the interest of file size while retaining similar quality, is there another format (OGG, WMA) that would be better than MP3?

I know that transcoding is really bad for sound quality, but it is faster for me transcode than to re-rip and encode (I know, I'm lazy). By the way, I have a Windows Mobile 5 phone and while free MP3 players for this format abound on the net, there are fewer players for other formats. Anyone have suggestions for multi-format freeware players? Thanks.

At lower bit rates say 64Kb/s or 96Kb/s AAC with a good encoder (Apple or Nero Digital) is probably better then MP3 at bitrates above 128Kb/s there probably isn't much in it between AAC and a good MP3 encoder (LAME).

However your mileage may vary. Look at http://www.maresweb.de/listening-tests/