Hi. Since I'm interested in quality, I did some listening tests using Vorbis beta4, mode -b256. I think that ~256kbps, ~5.5:1 compression is still a good tradeoff because I can put 6-7 albums on 1 CD-R (assuming that the average length of an album is ~50 minutes) while retaining excellent quality. My comments: 1.) most songs are transparent but there are still some glitches that appear occasionally (similar to glitch like in hf_glitch.wav that I sent to Monty) - these are probably high frequency glitches because they appear mostly with cymbals. Note however that these artifacts are rather subtle so if you don't have some listening experience you might not hear them at all. Still, in this bitrange, these artifacts shouldn't be present. 2.) gapless song come out perfectly! - no more clicks and pops - this is probably due to more accurate compression in beta4 so the edges of the songs are now matching with no clicks and pops. 3.) there's still some pre-echo (castanets.wav and only one file from my pre-echo test clips). But I think you're going to have a hard time finding a song that will exhibit pre-echo in -b256 mode. 4.) horn.wav still doesn't sound transparent! -b256 gives 100kbps, but there is still some noise introduced. It looks like VBR isn't giving enough bits because MP3 doesn't have a problem with this clip. I'm only waiting for 1) and 4) to be fixed before I start encoding... Greetings, Aleksandar --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.