I've been experimenting with MP3 and converting my CDs to MP3-320 compressed files. Unfortunately, I've discovered that the MP3 encoding process destroys the Rear Channel Sound. In a few cases I can still hear music in the rear, but for most songs the rear speaker just produces garbage sound... rather disappointing compared to the rich sound produced from the original CD! I suppose MP3 considers the rear channel information to be "inaudible" which it would be in a standard 2-speaker stereo arrangement, but the addition of the rear speaker makes these types of sounds *very* audible. It's basically an echo effect that is audible when listening to the CD and places the listener *inside* the music, but sadly lacking on the MP3 rip. The stripping of that rear channel echo dramatically diminishes the experience. Troy P.S. I'm using CDex for ripping and LAME for encoding with the following settings: q=0;Very High Quality, Stereo, 320kbps.
Try Lame version 3.90.2 (or 3.92) with "--alt-preset standard" as option. I'm not expert, but it should keep all the surround information. If not, go for the highest : "--alt-preset insane". List of recommended Lame compiles : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=478 List of recommended Lame settings : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=15&t=203 Most of them use code-level tweaks to achieve quality that is impossible with regular command lines, for the same bitrate.
To preserve surround information, you must use --nssafejoint. This switch is already enabled by default in --alt-presets.
