In order to finally finish the discussion about the encoders to be used in the upcoming MP3 listening test at 128 kbps, I would like to let you decide what to use as fifth contender. Some of you wanted LAME 3.97 in order to have a direct comparison between the new 3.98 and the old 3.97, others are interested to see how the speed optimized Gogo performs and I (maybe others too) had the idea to test FhG 4.1 in CBR mode and without any additional switches because it encodes at almost 80x according to some quick tests.

I hope many people will vote. Whatever comes out first until let's say Thursday next week will be used so we can finally move on to the samples discussion.

The antecedent discussion thread(s) are quite long, hence: could you sum up the 4 codec settings that have been fixed yet?

Sorry, what's the first 4?

1)LAME 3.98,
2)FhG with Q switch and VBR,
3)iTunes using best quality settings,
4)Helix VBR
?

Correct.

As far as I can see so far, Gogo is the least wanted contender so it's good that we have this poll. Keep voting.

(I am saying this because Gogo was the fifth contender of choice initially.)

Though I'd like to see GoGo's result we have to make up our minds in order to restrict the number of contenders. (My vote was FhG 4.1 fast CBR, but I understand that Lame 3.97 attracts more interest).

According to this thread:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry214018

Gogo was released in 2004 and is based on LAME 3.92. I do not really see the interest in testing it. FhG 4.1 is similarly old but at least it is a different codebase.

As far as I understand, it is based on 3.88 with some additions from 3.92's codebase like --vbr-new, so it's not that the underlying "engine" was replaced entirely by 3.92. Please correct me if I am wrong.

OK, the poll is over. The majority (70.18%) wants LAME 3.97 -V5 --vbr-new.

Could a moderator please close both the topic and the poll?