Poll was here.
Poll result:


Codecs used:
Testfile01: Sonicstage 4.3 Atrac3+ 64kbps
Testfile02: Sonicstage 4.3 Atrac3 66kbps
Testfile03: Sonicstage 4.3 HE-AAC 64kbps
Testfile04: WMP11 WMA 64kbps CBR

I did this particular setup as a throwback when Sony and Microsoft was claiming how good their respective codecs were (Atrac and WMA) @ 64kbps. Remember when MS was claiming WMA 64kbps to be better than MP3 @ 128kbps?
Most people like HE-AAC, obviously. Thanks for participating. Poll #6 is up already.

It is interesting that no one (out of the 6 people that participated) liked the ATRAC3 files. Just out of curiosity, why did you use SonicStage for HE-AAC encoding and not Nero?

It would be interesting to see the result if HE-AAC wasn't included. At that time, I wasn't familiar with Nero's encoder setup, etc, and Sonicstage was already on my system. Sonicstage has quite a bunch of codecs in it, with the ability to rip+encode to Atrac/MP3/WMA/LC-AAC/HE-AAC.

There is nothing to like in HE-AAC. There are just cases when I pick it as the lesser evil.

At the bit-rates HE-AAC is designed for, I think it does a miraculous job of most content. Polls like this go someway to showing that. Surely that's a reason to like HE-AAC, should you have a reason to encode at these bit-rates? Obviously we'd rather use higher bit-rates for our music, but HE-AAC isn't redundant over 128kbps, isn't it?

Atrac3+ was worst to me, and the HE AAC best. Amazing that there is such a difference between 64 and 96 to be honest. Aside from WMA being CBR, were the others VBR? I'm not familiar with SonicStage.

Atrac is CBR. Looking at how the bitrate fluctuate in foobar2000, I think Sonicstage's HE-AAC is ABR.