I encoded Charlez Aznavour old album for my parents with 3.90.02 aps standard and noticed following. Many tracks became 127-128 kbs. Most of them contain 98% of 128 kbs blocks. (let's take one of those tracks as example 1)
Then I encoded one of them in aps 128 and got nearly 112 kbs file (example 2).
Then I used aps 160 and got 128 encoded file (example 3).
Can anybody place this examples in order by quality?
Thanks.

P.S. There weren't joint stereo blocks in any example. Aps extreme made 162 kbs.

Is it possible this was a mono or fake stereo or such album?

Yes. Just tested it in COOL EDIT PRO 2.

The same shows up with old folk albums; >95% of the blocks for all four volumes of the Anthology of American Folk Music were 128kbps with aps, I imagine because of the -b 128. Though it did have a couple of joint stereo blocks.

I'd say ranking them in quality is unnecessary because they're all basically transparent. I couldn't ABX the aps folk tracks. Try ABXing the aps 128 files (the ~112kbps ones).

Yes, you said it correct. It is unnecessary, but I just want to know the theory. If the result of aps standard would be stereo track at 142 kbs. Use ABR? Use or not to use?



And why no joint stereo blocks were used if the track is strong mono?