LAME: -V 2 vs. -V 0

The argument about -V 0 and CBR 320 seems a bit silly to me, so I'm going to stay out of it. I'll just address the original question.

Originally Posted by Rimo

For those who use -V 0, why are you choosing it over -V 2? Do you actually hear any improvement?

I think for a lot of people, or at least for me, we want the standard of "maximum" quality (barring, of course, that the LAME technology is still being developed to this day) without having to attempt to discern whether or not it is actually noticeable.

Let me put it this way: perhaps some specific pieces of audio do lose quality if encoded with -V 2. But, perhaps some don't. Who really wants to encode every MP3 over and over again until you've found the point you can hear the difference at? For one MP3, it may be -V 2, but for another MP3, it may be as low as -V 4. And, VBR tends to be so high quality anyway, that who can honestly tell the difference most of the time?

I don't think it's worth trying to find something that is "probably" just as good as the accepted "best" of today's LAME technology, or using something at the possible risk of it not being better. -V 0 is the accepted best today, so I'm going to use it.

Yet still, it would be a waste to go with the "actual best", which would be CBR 320. Again, no difference can really be heard, and it's a monster when it comes to hard drive size.

This is why I prefer -V 0 personally; it's a guarantee that you are getting today's best, and for not a gross amount more hard drive size. To use CBR 320 would just be... too paranoid.

Jam it back in, in the dark.